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THE NEW ROME. 



THE 



NEW ROME; 



THE UNITED STATES OF THE WORLD. 



BY 



THEODORE POESCHE AND CHARLES GOEPP. 




G. P. PUTNAM & CO., 10 PARK PLACE. 



M.DCCC.LIII. 



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Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1853, 

By G. P. Putnam and Company, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York. 



TO 

fnnltlht Durn, 

- PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, 

THIS WORK 

IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED, BEING A GUESS AT THE SPIRIT 
IN WHICH HE WAS ELECTED. 



PREFACE 



A BOOK with two authors would not be so rare a 
thing as it is, if it were better understood that every 
work is the fruit, not of individual thought, but of 
the intellectual currents that pervade whole times and 
nations, — that, in fact, every individuality is but a 
modified reproduction of the thoughts and fancies of 
the age in which it appears. The leading idea de- 
tailed in the following pages occurred at nearly the 
same time to both of the individuals whose names 
appear on the title-page. Tt was about the end of the 
year 1848, when the first enthusiasm consequent upon 
the sudden uprising of France, Italy, and Germany, 
had given place to the confusion of jarring opinions, 
interests, and nationalities, which were destined ulti- 
mately to ingulf the hopes then awakened, that the 
destiny of the existing Eepublic of America, to realize 
the ideal Eepublic of the World, took shape in the mind 
of the author whose name is first mentioned, on the 



IV PREFACE. 

plains of Leipsic, and to the other in the farming 
comities of Pennsylvania. It is no less characteristic, 
that while the inhabitant of Germany, the home of 
metaphysical philosophy, took np the question in its 
practical light, as a relief from existing ills, the Amer- 
ican forgot the matter-of-fact character of his country 
to regard this particular subject in its ideal light, as 
the solution of a historical problem. The same divi- 
sion of labor was carried out in the present production ; 
the geographical, ethnographical, statistical, commer- 
cial, monetary, and industrial observations and reflec- 
tions, are the work of Poesche. The historical, legal, 
and metaphysical arguments, the details on American 
legal and political institutions, are, to a great extent', 
the production of his colleague. The former had 
written a work on the subject while in Germany, in 
the year 1850, which fell into the hands of the police, 
and could not be published. Goepp had laid clown the 
outlines of the plan in a little pamphlet, entitled, " E 
pluribus Unum," a political tract on Kossuth and 
America, written in the heat of the Kossuth furor, in 
December, 1851. We met at the Congress of Phila- 
delphia, mentioned in the book, and soon after formed 
the design of writing this work. Poesche wrote the 
first draft in German. Goepp, following his arrange- 
ment, reproduced it in English, interpolating his own 
ideas, and such new thoughts as occurred to either or 



PREFACE. 



both, in their conversation and studies, as the work 
went on. In the first part, on the political organiza- 
tion, these were little more than expansions ; the second 
chapter, on the social organization, in its present form, 
is, to a much greater extent, the production of the 
English partner. ■ The work swelled to nearly double 
its size, owing principally to the quotations introduced 
from the current literature of the day, which offered so 
many suggestions, that the entire press seemed to have 
resolved itself into a vast literary foraging party for 
the benefit of our undertaking. 

It was finished early in November, 1852. The 
publication being somewhat later, some of our predic- 
tions have already become verified, while possibly 
some others may have missed their aim. We have 
preferred to make no alterations on this account, but 
are willing that the results of the test of these five 
months should be considered as a criterion of its accu- 
racy in the more distant future. 

THE AUTHORS. 



THE NEW ROME; 



THE UNITED STATES OF THE WORLD, 



A HOROSCOPE. 

rjIHE days of prophecy are over ; but why 1 Not because 
the future is less important to us than it was of old ; for, 
instead of the reliance on a heavenly prospect which carried 
the hearts of our forefathers triumphantly through all the ills 
that flesh is heir to, we are fast substituting earthly longings 
after present prosperity, and the good things of this little span 
of years. Not because we look with more of reverential awe 
upon the curtain that veils the things to come ; the Yankee 
" has a hole in his head where the bump of veneration ought 
to be," and nothing is too high or too low for his investiga- 
tion. Nor yet because we are less able than formerly to pry 
into its secrets ; for, however man may degenerate in other 



8 THE ^Eff ROME. 

respects, he is still learning tacts, and still improving his 
powers of digesting them. 

" History is philosophy teaching by example ;" but shall 
we for ever repeat the fable, and never propound the moral 1 
The astronomer studies the history of the stars to learn the 
laws which must regulate their coming progress ; why cannot 
the historical astronomer do likewise 1 True, the stars that 
crowd his nether sky are more numerous, more multifarious, 
and more erratic than those of the upper firmament ; but they 
have their laws nevertheless, and must obey them. 

We live in the future, hope for it, strive towards it ; — it is 
elastic and pliable, and bows to the sceptre of the imagina- 
tion as submissively as to the sword of the will. Yet, like 
all else within the sphere of effects and causes, it has its pos- 
sibilities and impossibilities ; and we shall steer the more 
wisely the sooner these inexorable headlands are open to the 
view. 

The following essay is a map of the future of mankind, 
drawn from surveys of the past and present. It professes to 
tell neither what might nor what should, but simply what 
must be. 



I. — POLITICS. 



PT1HE old paradox, " There is nothing new under the sun,*' 
has recently been amplified into a comparison of history 
to a spiral revolution, in which the same positions recur, but 
with a difference. Perhaps a more fitting type would be 
found in the revolutions of a satellite, modified at each repeti- 
tion by the progress of its planet. If we search the history 
of the past for a parallel to the present aspect of political 
relations, we find it in the time when Greece had just passed 
the meridian of her glory, when Macedon had awakened to 
a consciousness of her powers, and the Roman republic was 
mewing her wings for a flight destined to outstrip them both. 
Applied to our times, the first is the type of Western Europe ; 
boundlessly rich in art and science, but no longer strong of 
will. ^ Russia, her vassal in civilization, but her superior in 
brute force, dreams of universal empire; while the American 
republic, with the motto " E pluribus Unum" flaming in her 
fillet, is developing her resources of mind and body with an 
1* 



10 THE NEW ROME. 

external force and an internal freedom which mark her the 
germ of a World's Republic. 

This " New Rome," the American Union, is a reflection of 
the old, even in its geographical position. The Roman Em- 
pire, embracing the " orbis terrarum" of the geography of 
those times, was a political organization of the circle of lands 
that skirted the Mediterranean Sea, in the midst of which, 
like a great line-of-battle ship, was moored the Italian penin- 
sula. So the American peninsula, its northern extremity 
connected with the mainland of the other continent by means 
of icebergs which have baffled our explorers as obstinately as 
the Rhsetian Alps whilom hemmed in the Roman pioneers, 
divides the ocean into its two great basins. In the middle of 
these peninsulas were founded, respectively, the Etrurian and 
the British colonies. Each looks to the lands of the East for 
the sources of its civilization. Each casts its eyes first upon 
its native peninsula, and strives to reduce it to its undisputed 
sway. Thus the acquisition of all Italy was an important 
epoch in Roman politics ; it supplied the base for further 
operations. Thus "The continent is ours, 'Ms becoming more 
and more distinctly a leading American aspiration. Bolivar 
cherished the plan ; Webster and Douglass have publicly 
avowed it. A more immediate object, desired by the whole 
people, is the northern portion, from the Arctic Ocean to the 
Isthmus of Darien. 

The past territorial growth of the United States is found 
to have been governed by well-defined laws. North America 
is divided into three main portions : the Atlantic sea-board, 



POLITICS. 11 

extending to the Alleghanies, the key of which is New York ; 
the Mississippi valley, extending from the Alleghanies to the 
Rocky Mountains, and guarded by New Orleans ; and the 
Pacific coast, forming the western slope of the Rocky Moun- 
tains, with San Francisco for its entrance-gate. The first was 
of course first settled ; it was the theatre of the war of Inde- 
pendence and of the compact of Union. These two achieve- 
ments opened the way to the passage of the Alleghanies. 
The outlet and the western half of the Mississippi valley 
were in possession of a foreign power, but it was not difficult 
to purchase them. Still this did not suffice to draw the tide 
of population into the trans-Mississippian portions of the 
valley. Our present civilization is based upon the means of 
communication afforded by the ocean ; its effects extend 
inland, but only to a limited distance. Mr. Benton knows 
that the Pacific railroad is indispensable to make an empire 
state on the Missouri. "Pierce the Rocky Mountains," he 
said, " and hew their highest crag into a statue of Columbus, 
pointing the old world on the way to the Indies !" 

The acquisition of the Pacific coast came to his aid. In the 
last decade, a broad belt of country, comprising Texas, New 
Mexico, California, and Oregon, was definitely united with us. 
The settlement of these territories is now the cardinal interest 
of the Union ; the migration thither is a proof of it. By sea 
and land hundreds of thousands are pouring into the new- 
found El Dorados. From the 1st of January, 1852, to the 
14th of August, the number of passengers landed at San 
Francisco was fifty .one thousand. The remaining four months 



12 THE NEW ROME. 

and a half will not fall short of this amount ; the Chinese emi- 
gration, which is just beginning to assume gigantic propor- 
tions, will make up for all deficiencies. Seventy thousand 
more are scattered over various stages of the overland route. 
When these pilgrims, after crossing the parched plains of the 
West and scaling the Rocky Mountains, come again to view 
the boundless ocean, their hearts beat high, like the ten 
thousand Greeks retreating out of Persia ; and as the latter, 
on seeing the Pontus, cried out, " tiaXacoa, $a\aooa" so 
may these Americans greet the ocean, an element as vital to 
them as the Mediterranean was to the Greeks. The posses- 
sion of her western coast makes America a self-balanced whole, 
rounds her proportions, and enables her to cast off the swad- 
dling clothes of infancy. " A continent and two oceans are 
in the hands of that people," says the London Times ; and so 
must it be, for one ocean is not enough for America. 

1. — Peesent Pkojects. 

Pour years have elapsed since the western coasts were sub- 
jugated to civilization, and other countries have, in the mean 
time, grown ripe for infederation : Cuba, at present, attracts 
the greatest attention. There can be no doubt that the 
efforts for its annexation must succeed. The slavery question, 
it is true, acts as a disturbing element, but an antidote offers 
in the shape of equivalent northern acquisitions. A door has 
also opened for the annexation of Hayti. In the war between 
Dominica and the Emperor, the former has enlisted Ameri- 



POLITICS. 13 

can officers ; two of these have recently been sent to " the 
States," to purchase vessels of war, and to introduce Yankee 
immigrants. They are not likely to fail of success ; nor is it 
to be expected that the throne of his sable majesty will long 
withstand the shock of the republicans and their allies. 

Canada has had its annexation party for several years; it 
is constantly at work, and its principles are making visible 
progress. The free-trade victory of England has swept away 
the commercial privileges formerly enjoyed by her colonies ; 
and the Colonial system now weighs upon them without a 
compensating advantage. The loss of those privileges makes 
an uninterrupted communication with the United States more 
desirable than ever; and the Reciprocity efforts are the result. 
But if the principle of reciprocity is to be carried beyond a 
sophism, it must mean the reciprocal acceptance by each 
country of all that the other is interested in exporting ; and 
then it amounts to a removal of all taxes upon intercourse. 
That cannot be established without giving each country the 
power of regulating the foreign trade of the other, which is 
an absurdity, or by making the regulation of commerce a 
common concern, which involves the extension of the Union 
over the Canadian States.* The main impediment is found in 
the un-Teutonic descent, foreign language, and anti-republican 



* In the Canadian Parliament, Mr. Mackenzie has taken occasion again- 
to express his bitterness towards the United States. In a debate on the 
Reciprocity Question, he explained that the reason why the Americans 
refuse reciprocity to Canada, was their desire for annexation. 



14 THE NE W ROME. 

traditions, and the want of intelligence and enterprise of the 
French Canadians, who now form the bulk of the population. 
Their very nationality, however, must make them adverse to 
British supremacy, and favorable to a coalition with the rebel 
subjects of that power ; and this sentiment of the masses 
finds a natural ally in the interests of the political leaders, 
even when of English descent, who would certainly rather 
aspire to a seat in the Senate of the United States, for which 
their language and education amply fit them, than to the 
leadership in the Legislative Council at Montreal or Toronto. 
The absolute religious and political liberty of the United 
States must stimulate, sooner or later, the desires of the 
whole population. A highly interesting paragraph in a recent 
newspaper, states that an emigration of French Canadians to 
the neighborhood of Kaskaskia, in Illinois, is in progress, 
which, from its extent and organization, bids fair to affect 
perceptibly the population of British America — another 
powerful agent in the actual union of the two countries.* 
Thus a chain of intricacies and difficulties is preparing, which 
are to be welcomed for the solution that must inevitably fol- 
low. The natural resources and incipient cultivation of this 



* An abstract of the official Census taken last January, has just been 
laid before the House of Assembly. The total population of Lower 
Canada is 890,261, and that of Upper Canada, 952,004. The enumeration 
was taken last January, and if the population then numbered 1,842,265, it 
cannot now be far short of two millions. About three-fourths of the popu- 
lation are native Canadians. The French, from a little over 60,000 at the 
conquest, have risen to 669,528, in spite of the recent large emigration of that 



POLITICS. 



15 



vast expanse, when fairly thrown open to the invigorating in- 
fluence of American enterprise, must add materially to the 
comparative weight of America in the scale of power. The 
extinguishment of the claim of England to her colonies will 
be discussed after we shall have enumerated the other 
countries now in process of infederation. 



race to Illinois, and other parts of the United States. The following state- 
ment shows the origin or nativity of the whole population : 

Origins. Lower Upper 

Natives of Canada. Canada. Total. 

England and Wales, 11,230 82,690 93,929 

Scotland, 14,565 75,811 90,376 

Ireland, 51.499 176,267 227,766 

Canada, French origin, 669,528 26,417 795,945 

Canada, not of French origin, 125,580 526,093 651,673 

United States, 12,482 43,732 56,214 

Nova Scotia and Prince Edwards, 474 3,785 4,259 

New Brunswick, 480 2,634 3,114 

Newfoundland, 51 79 130 

West Indies, 47 345 S92 

East Indies, 4 106 110 

Germany and Holland, 159 9,957 10,116 

France and Belgium, 359 1,007 1,366 

Italy and Greece, 38 15 43 

Spain and Portugal, 18 57 75 

Sweden and Norway, 12 29 41 

Russia, Poland, and Prussia, 8 1S8 196 

Switzerland, 38 209 247 

Austria and Hungary, 2 11 13 

Guernsey, 118 24 142 

Jersey and other British Islands, 293 131 424 

Other places, S30 1,351 2,181 

Born at Sea, 10 168 178 

Birthplaces not known, 2,446 8S9 3,335 

Total population, S90/201 952,004 1,842,265 

It is shown by the above statement that about a twentieth part of the 
population of Upper Canada is of United States origin. How much they 
may do to indoctrinate the population with republican ideas is a difficult 



16 THE NEW ROME. 

These are, in the first place, the remaining portions of the 
Northern Continent, down to the Isthmus of Panama. These 
gardens of the world may be said, without exaggeration, to 
be dying for want of annexation. Of a population of ten 
millions, seven-eighths are composed of Indians and Mestizes, 
who are either highwaymen and thieves, vagrants or peons. 
They are the " working-class," and monopolize the labor in- 
terest ; as they do not labor, no work is done. The Creoles 
form an apology for a middle class, and furnish principally 

the small business men. small formers, and rancheros ; 

but where there is no labor, there can be but little business. 
The more ambitious individuals among them seek a sphere in 
the church or the army, the only fields of effort and success. 
In the former, they hope to share in the pride of the most 
gorgeously ornamented public edifices in the world, in the 
delights of the bishops' palaces, and the influence derived from 
the incalculable revenues extorted from the people to their 



question. "Where Americans are settled in considerable numbers, as in the 
western part of the Province, they retain all their native republicanism. 
But not only is a twentieth part of the population of Upper Canada 
American born ; a vast proportion of native Canadians, who form about 
half the entire population of Upper Canada, are descended of American 
citizens, either directly or through a distance of two or three generations. 
There must, as any one may see by a glance at these facts, be a strong 
American element in the population of Upper Canada ; one way or another, 
either by birth, descent, or contact of ideas, about half the population are 
wholly or partially Americanized. It ought not, therefore, perhaps, to be 
surprising that there is a perpetual tendency towards democratic institu- 
tions, which sometimes threatens to render all government impossible on 
present principles. 



POLITICS. 17 

hopeless impoverishment. To the latter, they are attracted 
by the glitter of epaulettes, the renown of presidencies of four 
weeks' duration, the excitement of pronunciamentos, and the 
spirit-stirring sounds of trumpet, fife, and drum, with very 
little danger from the over-use of ammunition ; when promo- 
tion is slow, they form "free corps" and subsist on pillage. 
These two institutions engross the politics of the country ; 
"God and Liberty," means the bishop and the general. Being 
both consumers, they cannot afford to pay taxes ; and the 
clergy want all the revenue that is to be obtained for their 
own particular purposes, and cannot afford to share any por- 
tion of them with their secular brethren. The consequence 
is, that cabinet upon cabinet send in their resignations because 
the soldiers want their pay when there is no money in the 
treasury, and no possibility of obtaining any ; and the Rever- 
end Congressmen are very sorry, but really don't see how the 
matter is to be helped. Sometimes a loan, bearing interest 
at three per cent, per month, is issued, which wants nothing to 
make it a political panacea, except purchasers. No wonder 
Louis Napoleon begins to fear for the supremacy of the " Latin 
race," and sends a handful of soldiers to Sonora to preserve 
it. 

But the country is not without elements of life. Until 
the war of '47, industry was in the hands of capitalists of 
London, Bristol, Hamburg, and Bordeaux. The younger sons 
of those houses were sent there to enter into mining, manu- 
facturing, and commercial speculations ; they amassed im- 
mense wealth, and were found by the officers of our army 



18 THE NEW ROME. 

either enjoying the almost Parisian luxuries of the capital, or 
living retired in haciendas, amid all the profusion of the tro- 
pics. Still their constant exposure to legal and illegal robbery, 
and comparative isolation among so degraded a people, made 
them look upon the land of their birth as that to which they 
hoped ultimately to return. While no political change was 
presented to their minds except a colonial subjection to Euro- 
pean monarchy, they had but little hope of better times. 

A new era opens with the introduction of American enter- 
prise consequent upon the war, and the settlement of Califor- 
nia and Australia, which brought these countries into demand 
as transit routes. The locomotive snorts between Chagres 
and Panama, and the steamboat ploughs the Nicaraguan 
lakes. Aspinwall, and other American towns, founded by 
American citizens, speaking the English language, and adopt- 
ing Anglo-Saxon manners, customs, and municipal regulations, 
are springing up along the route. The Yankees are making 
inroads on every side; especially on the Western coast. 
As a young hive of bees, if sound and healthy, will infallibly 
send forth its swarms, so California is already planting colo- 
nies. Their nearest goals are the Mexican States of Sonora 
and Nether California. They meet with no opposition, except, 
perhaps, from Louis Napoleon, and we shall soon see those 
states Americanized. If further proof were wanted that these 
things tend to annexation, we have the authority of General 
Scott to remove every remaining doubt. In his speech, de- 
livered at Sandusky, Oct. 11th, 1852, he said: 

" An offer was made to me, to remain in Mexico, and govern it. The 



POLITICS. 19 

impressiou which generally prevails, that the proposition emanated from 
Congress, is an erroneous one. The overture was made to me by private 
citizens — men of wealth and prominence. During our stay in Mexico, our 
system of government and police was established, which, as the inhabitants 
themselves confessed, gave security — for the first time, perfect and absolute 
security — to person and property. About two-fifths of all the branches of 
government, including nearly a majority of the members of Congress and the 
Executive, were quite desirous of having that country annexed to ours. 

" They knew that upon the ratification of the treaty of peace, nineteen 
out of twenty of the persons belongiug to the American army would stand 
disbanded, and would be absolutely free from all obligations to remain in 
the army another moment. They supposed, if they could obtain my ser- 
vices, I would retain these twelve or fifteen thousand men, and that I could 
easily obtain one hundred thousand more from home. The hope was, that 
it would immediately cause annexation. They offered me one million of 
dollars as a bonus, with a salary of 250,000 per annum, and five responsi- 
ble individuals to become security in any bank in New York which I might 
name. It would be so arranged that I might get it in five days. They ex- 
pected that annexation would be brought about in a few years, or, if not, 
that I could organize the finances, and straighten the complex affairs of that 
government. It was understood that nearly a majority of Congress was 
in favor of annexation, and that it was only necessary to publish a pronun- 
ciamento to that effect to secure the object. We possessed all the arms of 
the country, and occupied their cannon-foundries and powder-manufac- 
tories, had possession of the fortified places, and could easily have held 
them in our possession if this arrangement had gone into effect. A pub- 
lished pronunciamento would have brought Congress right over to us, and 
with these fifteen thousand Americans holding the fortresses of the country, 
all Mexico could not have disturbed us. "We might have been there to 
this day if it had been necessary. 

" I loved my distant home. I was not in favor of the annexation of 
Mexico to my own country. Mexico (Proper) has about eight millions of 
inhabitants, and out of these eight millions there are not more than one 
million who are of pure European blood. The Indians and mixed races 
constitute about seven millions. They are exceedingly inferior to our own. 
As a lover of my country, I was opposed to mixing up that race with our 
own. This was the first objection on my part to this proposition. May I 
plead some little love of home, which gave me the preference for the soil 
of my own country and its institutions V 



20 THE NEW ROME. 

However honorable to his personal feelings, Gen. Scott will 
come to regret this fear of the Indians and mixed races, which 
may end in making two wars necessary to do the work of one. 
That work must be done whenever the Americans come to 
understand, as they already divine, their ' : manifest destiny." 
Why is the Mexican called Mexican, the Cuban Cuban, and 
the continental name of American bestowed upon the citizen 
of the United States alone 1 

The following article appeared in the Panama Star, of Oct. 
16, 1852: 

" Federation of the Isthmus. — For some time past, the leading topic of 
conversation in this city, both publicly and privately, as well as the main 
subject of the native press, has been the discussion of the independence 
of the Isthmus, or, rather, the formation of the Isthmus into a Federal State, 
and suggestions of annexation to a more powerful country. The matter 
has already been brought before the public, both through the Government 
at Bogota, and the Carnara Provincial in this city. 

" The Government at Bogota has acted most liberally in opening the mat- 
ter for discussion, and the Provincial Carnara here have acted wisely in 
summoning the people publicly, to express their sentiments in reference to 
a separation from their mother State." 

Not content with occupying the Californian territory, the 
people of that State of adventurers have overrun the Sand- 
wich Islands, made interest with the government, and effected 
a treaty by which King Kamehameha III. bequeaths his king- 
dom to the American people, as of old Attalus made the 
Roman people heirs of his kingdom of Pergamus. Is there 
not something Roman in, the walk of this republic % The 
former administration, in pursuance of a policy more timid 
than cautious, have omitted to ratify this treaty; but the 



POLITICS. 21 

error will ere long be corrected. The annexation of these 
islands, forming, as they do, an important shipping station 
between America and Asia, is particularly interesting as mark- 
ing the extension of America beyond the continent. A people 
cannot forego its mission, and the mission of the American 
people is not bounded by oceans. 

A new project has just been devised, worthy, in the grandeur 
of its outlines, of the American mind. It is the settlement 
of the valley of the Amazon — the greatest river of the world, 
irrigating the most fertile region, cultivated by the most en- 
terprising people ! The suggestion will confer lasting renown 
upon Lieutenant Maury, its originator. The reason assigned 
for the occupation of the valley, that the series of its produc- 
tions begins where that of the productions of the Mississippi 
valley terminate, (sugar closing the train of the latter, and 
leading that of the former,) betrays the philosophical states- 
man. v But where are the laborers to be found for those im- 
mense plantations 1 The negroes of the cotton States will 
hardly suffice for the rice fields ; Texas is left bare of them. 
The day of African importation is happily over. But even 
now the advanced guard of the millions has arrived, who are 
destined, under Anglo-Saxon management, to accomplish the 
mighty work. China, with her population of three hundred 
and sixty-nine millions, has found an outlet on this continent. 
The gold of California has manifested the miraculous power 
claimed for it by Columbus, in his letter to Queen Isabella : 
11 El oro es excellentissimo, — it will even save souls from 
purgatory." In the Chinese Empire they punish a man for a 



22 THE NEW R O M E . 

breach of the peace by slinging a rope under his arms, and 
hanging him up in the sun. 

A company, under the name of the New York and Para- 
guay Steamship Company, has been chartered, and is now 
receiving subscriptions to its stock in New York, for the pur- 
pose of establishing a line of steamers for the navigation of 
the Rio de la Plata and its tributaries, of which the Parana, 
Paraguay, and Uruguay are the principal. The commerce 
of the fertile countries along the line of these rivers has long 
been closed to the world by the obstinacy of Rosas, the late 
Dictator of the Argentine Confederation, who forbade any 
vessel proceeding up and down the Rio de la Plata. On his 
downfall, however, it was thrown open, which will give a 
great impetus to the trade of the fertile states bordering on 
those streams. 

Be it said, in passing, that we now witness the first realiza- 
tion of the plan of Columbus, to reach the east by a westward 
route ; the fables of the El Dorado of Quinsai and Cathay are 
fables no longer. American history has doffed its prose, and 
now assumes all the gorgeous imagery of the Genoese who 
unchained the oceans. 



2. — Internal Growth. 

We have seen that the American mind is awakening to 
the necessity of overspreading the continent from the North 
Pole to the cliff of Don Diego Ramirez on Cape Horn. It 
does not enter upon the task, however, without calling in the 



POLITICS. 23 

assistance of all the nations of the earth. The true map of 
the world for the present epoch is that which takes the ocean 
for its starting point, as given in the Appendix. America is 
in the middle ; on either hand the ocean, bounded on one 
side by Europe and Africa, and by Asia on the other. There 
is but one ocean and two continents, the Western and the 
Eastern, of which latter Europe and Africa are peninsulas ; 
Australia is an Asiatic island. AH these countries increase 
and decrease in historical importance in proportion as they 
approach or retreat from the ocean, the great highway of 
nations. The dividing line which marks the outside, passes 
through the 100° of eastern longitude, traversing the greatest 
contiguous expanse of mainland which it is possible for a 
meridian to cover ; these regions, being the least oceanic, are 
accordingly the least historical in the world. 

The old world had no room for the expansion of the new 
ideas ; Columbus opened a new arena upon the virgin soil of 
the new-found continent. As Mother Earth of the Grecian 
fable upreared the island of Delos on her bosom, wherein to 
conceal the infant Jupiter from the murderous fangs of his 
unnatural father, Time, so the Genius of humanity transported 
the new ideas to America, there to gather their forces for the 
impending conquest of heaven and earth. The new organiza- 
tion draws from Europe the wholesome influences it needs ; 
but the sea screens it with maternal mantle from the Euro- 
pean powers of evil. 

It will not be amiss to notice, in this place, the internal 
growth of the United States, for the purpose of showing the 



24 THE NEW ROME, 

proportion between their swelling powers and their increasing 
task. The population, down from 1714, was as follows : — 

1714 434,000 

1727 580,000 

1750 1,260,000 

1754 1,425,000 

1760 1,695,000 

1770 , 2,312,000 

1780 2,945,000 

1790 3,929,872 

1800 5,305,952 

1810 7,239,814 

1820 9.638,920 

1830 12,866,131 

1840 1 7,063,353 

1850 23,144,126 

Compare the result of the last two English censuses : — 

1841 . .' 27,019,555 

1851 27,452,262 

The French censuses are still more unfavorable, since the 
English censuses of the first half of the century show an in- 
crease of population of 50 per cent. Here are the French 
censuses : — 

1801 27,349,003 

1806 29,107,425 

1821 30,461,875 

1831 32,569,223 

1836 33,540,910 

1841 34,240,178 

1846 35,400,486 

1851 35,781,628 

No country affords any comparison to the progress of 

America, in this respect. Its efficient causes are annexation. 



POLITICS. 25 

immigration, and internal increase. The first of these factors 
has hitherto contributed but little ; the second far more, as 
appears from the following table : — 

1790-1810 120,000 

1810-1820 ' 114,000 

1820-1830 203,000 

1830-18-10 778,000 

1840-1850 1,543,000 

Hence it appears that the immigration of every decade 
about doubles that of the preceding; in one case, (1830-1840,) 
the proportion was as three to one. That the present decade 
will not fall short of this ratio, may be inferred from the fact 
that in 1851, 335,966 persons emigrated from England alone, 
267,357 of them to America. The German emigration of the 
last five years averaged annually 80,000; in 1851 it reached 
1 13,199. The immigration of 1852, to the port of New York 
alone, has been as follows : — 

January 1 1,592 

February 5,252 

March 21,726 

April 28,193 

May 33,372 

June 49,225 

July 29,403 

August 34,513 

September 36,777 

October 20,115 

Total 270,168 

The German emigration, at all ports, for the same year, is 
at least 200,000, and that of 1853 cannot fall short of 400,- 
2 



26 T HE N E W E OME. 

000. Continued political and social pressure combined with 
improved means of locomotion, to produce these stupendous 
phenomena. Thus the relative importance of the three 
sources of accretion, of which natural increase was hitherto 
by far the most efficient, must undergo a change; immigra- 
tion and annexation being destined to rise considerably in the 
scale. The past increase averaged 36 per cent, for every ten 
years; supposing this to remain, the population would in- 
crease as follows : — 

1860 30,958,000 

1810 41,145,000 

1880 54,559,000 

1890 73,144,000 

1900 97,525,000 

1910 1 20,034,000 

1920 160,045,000 

1930 213,360,000 

1940 284,480,000 

1950 379,307,000 

Yet the actual growth will manifestly become far more 
rapid, though irregular; the mass of probabilities, however, 
makes every calculation uncertain. 

3. — Constitution. 

The causes of this unparalleled growth and infinite expan- 
siveness must be looked for in the political and social organi- 
zation of the United States ; their natural advantages are 
shared by other countries, as Brazil, which have shown no 
symptoms of these capacities. Our republic is the result of 



POLITICS. 27 

a secessio plebis in montem sacrum^ of a segregation, not only 
threatened and attempted, but effected, or in the course of 
effectuation, of the third and fourth estates, those of intellect 
and labor, from the first and second, those of the priesthood 
and the aristocracy. Ancient Rome went down because this 
separation was then rescinded ; the new Rome, thanks to the 
guiding hand of Columbus, is the offspring of this movement, 
and must stand so long as its force remains unspent. All 
the nations of Europe, through their children, have helped to 
rear this edifice of human freedom; but the chief credit is 
due to the Anglo-Saxons. The old Germanic liberty lost its 
political phase in Germany, but was preserved and developed 
in England, as of old the institutions of the Doric tribes 
found an asylum from the destroying hand of the HeraclidaB 
in the recesses of Crete, whence Lycurgus afterwards trans- 
ferred them back to Sparta. This liberty, when endangered 
in England, was vindicated and raised to its present perfec- 
tion by the people of America. Let us view it somewhat in 

detail. t 

Form of Government. 

The American union is an organized constellation of 
sovereignties. It is a consolidated republic, in so far as its 
central government is financially, and in part politically, in- 
dependent of the integrating states ; but it is a free confedera- 
tion in as far as the sovereign members are self-existent, and 
controllable in nothing but the points they have themselves 
conceded. 

The Constitution of the United States is amendable 



28 THE NEW ROME. 

by the ratification, by three-fourths of the several states, of 
proposals made by a convention called by two-thirds of both 
houses of Congress, or on the application of two-thirds of the 
states : this is the highest power acknowledged by the Con- 
stitution. Under this sole restriction, it is the supreme and 
unalterable Jaw 

In it the confederating states form a perpetual compact to 
give faith and credit to each other's acts, records, and judicial 
proceedings; to admit the citizens of every state to all the 
rights of citizenship in every other ; to surrender up mutually 
fugitives from justice and from labor; to preserve republi- 
can forms of government; to impose no restraints upon in- 
tercourse, and to establish and maintain a federal government 
with certain specified powers and duties. 

In favor of this government the several states also forego 
the sovereign rights of foreign negotiation, making war, and 
maintaining standing armies, of bills of credit, the making of 
any thing but gold and silver a legal tender or payment of 
debts, passing ex-post facto laws, bills of attainder, or improv- 
ing the obligations of contracts, granting titles of nobility, 
and laying duties on imports, exports, and tonnage. 

The federal government is, on its part, expressly restricted 
from impairing the prerogative of the states by the appoint- 
ment of militia officers, by laying duties on exports, by regu- 
lating commerce to the preference of one state and the 
detriment of another, or by granting titles of nobility. These 
express reservations do not exclude implied ones, but all rights 
are reserved which are not expressly granted. 



POLITICS. 29 

The rights of the people under the federal government are 
further guarded from invasion by the suspension of the writ 
of habeas corpus, bills of attainder or ex-post facto laws, reli- 
gious tests, regulations, or church establishments, invasions of 
the freedom of speech, of the press, of assemblage, of peti- 
tion, of the right to bear arms, of exemption from the illegal 
quartering of troops, unreasonable searches and seizure, indefi- 
nite and unauthorized warrants, from arraignment for crime, 
except upon presentment of a grand jury, from repeated trials 
in capital cases, from compulsory self-inculpation, from de- 
privation of life, liberty, or property without due process of 
law, or from deprivation of property for a public purpose 
without compensation. An impartial jury trial is secured in 
all criminal cases, and in all civil ones of amount ; the requi- 
sition of excessive bail, and the infliction of cruel and unusual 
punishments or excessive fines, is expressly prohibited. 

Under these restrictions, the following powers are 
delegated : — 

1. To the legislative branch, the power of declaring war, 
of raising and supporting armies and navies, of calling forth 
the militia for purposes of defence, and of its organization 
and discipline, of regulating foreign, inter-state, and Indian 
commerce, of naturalization and bankruptcy laws, of coinage, 
weights, measures, post-offices, patents, and copyrights ; and 
of borrowing money, and laying and collecting uniform 
taxes, duties, imports and excises ; of governing territories, 
admitting new states, and guaranteeing to every state a repub- 
lican government, and freedom from invasion. 



30 THE NEW ROME. 

2. To the judiciary, the power of deciding on cases 
arising under the laws passed by the federal government, 
cases affecting ambassadors and consuls, cases of admiralty 
jurisdiction, controversies in which the Lulled States are a 
party, and controversies between states. 

3. To the executive, the chief command of the army and 
navy, the power of pardoning, and (with the advice and 
consent of the Senate) of making treaties, and appointing 
public officers. 

The legislative power is vested in a house of represent- 
atives, a senate, and, for certain purposes, a president. Every 
law must be proposed in one of the two houses, passed by a 
majority of both, and receive the assent of the president, or 
be re- submitted to the vote of the houses, and receive two- 
thirds of their suffrages. The courts are organized by acts 
of Congress, but the appointment of the judges must conform 
to the constitutional provision. 

The members of the house of representatives are elected 
by the suffrages of the voters for the lower houses of the 
respective state legislatures ; they are apportioned among 
the states in the ratio of their population, securing, however, 
to each state, at least one representative. The senate con- 
sists of two members elected by the legislatures of each 
of the several states. The president is elected by the vote 
of the states, each state having a number of votes equal to 
that of its representatives and senators. 

Many of the features thus roughly sketched are acknowl- 
edged to be defective ; others, not mentioned, are still more 



POLITICS. 31 

so. There is, however, very little prospect of amendment, 
for the simple reason that nobody feels the grievance. It is 
a government that imposes no rule, but only guards against 
the imposition of rule from elsewhere ; the name of govern- 
ment is hardly applicable to such a mere safety-valve against 
the pressure of abnormal forces. The government, so called, 
has so little hold upon the people, that a sketch of the 
government fails to give any adequate idea of the organiza- 
tion and polity of the people under it. All the governmental 
functions referring to this head are expressly excluded from 
its sphere. If, then, the social life of the people is subjected 
to government regulations at all, those regulations must 
emanate from the respective state governments. Let us see 
how far this is the case. 

Every state is at liberty to form its own constitution ; 
hence it might be supposed that the organization of a present 
member of the confederacy could give no rule for that to be 
expected of those entering into it hereafter. But experience 
shows that the absolute liberty of choice has led to a more 
complete uniformity than could have been attained by the 
most rigorous peremptory legislation ; all the French, Span- 
ish, and German traditions are found to adapt themselves so 
fully to the revised and perfected Anglo-Saxon models, that 
these will certainly furnish the plan for all future structures. 
Each state changes its constitution, on the average, once in 
fifteen years ; those adopted in the same decade are, in all 
material respects, the same. New York is the leading state 
in point of extent, population, wealth, intelligence, and polit- 



32 THE NEW ROME. 

ical vitality. Her present constitution is of six years' stand- 
ing, and will afford a fair sample of the internal organization 
to be expected of the nearest future. 

It is amendable by the concurrent votes of two successive 
legislatures; and every twenty years the question of the 
election of a Constitutional Convention is submitted to the 
popular vote. 

All the rights of citizenship are inviolable, except upon 
process regulated by the laws of the land. Trial by jury, 
religious liberty and equality before the laws, the habeas 
corpus, the grand jury, the inviolability of private property, 
except for compensation, freedom of speech and the press, of 
assemblage and petition, are removed from the sphere of 
government interference. 

The land is the original and ultimate property of the 
people, who shall inherit in default of other heirs. Feudal 
tenures are abolished, lands declared to be allodial, leases for 
more than twelve years forbidden. Corporations shall not 
be formed by special laws. Banking shall not be permitted 
by special, but only under general laws ; but all bank-notes 
shall be registered and secured, by public stocks, and the 
individual responsibility of the bankers. 

The laws shall be codified. 

Persons having conscientious scruples against warfare, 
may be excused from militia service, on certain conditions. 
The subaltern officers of the militia shall be elected by their 
companies ; field officers of regiments by the subaltern offi- 
cers of their regiments; and brigadiers by the field officers 



POLITICS. 33 

of their brigades. Major-generals to be appointed by the 
governor. 

Every village elects its road-supervisors, school-directors, 
tax-assessors, and collectors ; all offices for weighing, guaging, 
and measuring are abolished. Every county elects its over- 
seers of the poor, board of commissioners, treasurer, sheriff, 
clerk, coroner, and district attorney. 

The property of the state shall be administered by the 
treasurer, the land office, the canal fund commissioners, 
the canal board, and the prison inspectors. The officers 
forming these boards, as well as the comptroller, attorney 
general, and state lawyer, shall be elected by the people. 

The state shall never sell its canals or salt-springs, nor 
loan its funds or credit to individuals or corporations. No 
debts shall be incurred except for some single work or object, 
expressly specified, to repel invasion, or to meet a casual 
failure in revenues. 

Elections shall be by ballot ; all citizens of the age of 
twenty-one years, who shall have inhabited the state one 
year, are voters. 

The government, thus restrained and curtailed, has its 
legislative, judicial, and executive branches. The former con- 
sists of an assembly of one hundred and twenty-eight mem- 
bers, elected in " single districts" for one year, and a biennial 
senate of thirty-two members. The manner of passing laws 
is the same with that pursued in Congress. 

The people of each township elect a justice of the peace, 
who, besides his magisterial functions, has jurisdiction of civil 
2* 



34 THE NEW ROME. 

suits of small amount. The county judge, elected in every 
county, holds the Criminal Court, and hears appeals in civil 
cases from the decisions of the justices. The state is divided 
into eight judicial districts, which are apportioned among the 
thirty-two judges of the Supreme Court ; they are elected in 
their respective districts, and decide upon civil controversies. 
The Court of Appeals, consisting of four of the judges of the 
Supreme Court, and four judges of appeals, elected by the 
state at large, are the High Court of Errors. 

The governor, elected for two years, is commander of the 
forces, which is a matter of small importance, as there are no 
forces to command. His patronage is almost annihilated, 
and even his pardoning power clogged and restricted. 

The chief advantage of the state over the federal govern- 
ment, is in the different relative importance of the chief exec- 
utive offices. While in the former he is little more than a 
registering clerk, in the latter he is the moving spring of the 
machine. The patronage of the central executive is one rea- 
son of this difference ; another lies in the fact that the foreign 
relations, falling within the sphere of the common authority, 
unavoidably require a single head. 

" In order to give our readers an idea," says the New York Tribune of 
December 9, 1852, describing the French system of government, as con- 
trasted with the one we have just described, "we take from the Annuaire 
de V Economie politique etde la Statistique for 1851, an account of the legal 
formalities necessary to be observed before a commune or township can be 
allowed to repair any of its public buildings or works. "We will suppose, 
for instance, that there is a bridge which is dangerous, and threatens to fall 
in, and the people want to mend it and make it safe. In America, the 
superintendent of roads or the commissioner of streets, or other officer 



POLITICS. 35 

named by the people for the purpose, would at once set to work and have 
the job done. Not so in France. There the following clumsy, expensive, 
and useless order of exercises has to be gone through with, all in 
writing : — 

" 1. The Mayor writes to the Sub-Prefect (the chief officer of the 
district or county, appointed by the Government) for permission to convene 
the Town Council to consider the repairing of the bridge. 2. The Sub- 
Prefect writes that it may be done. 3. The Council is convened by the 
Mayor. 4. At the meeting the Mayor sets forth his views, and a committee 
is appointed. 5. The committee meet, investigate the subject and appoint 
a reporter to draw up their conclusion. 6. The Town Council is again 
convened. 7. The report is read and the Council draws up its decision. 
8. The Mayor writes to an architect. 9. The architect draws a plan and 
estimates. 10. The Council is again convened. 11. It deliberates on the 
plan, and agrees to such and such alterations. 12. The alterations, with an 
explanatory letter, are sent to the architect. 13. He changes his plan and 
estimates accordingly, and sends it back. 14. The Council is convened 
again. 15. It considers and approves the plan and estimate. 16. The ap- 
proval, with an accompanying letter, is sent back to the architect. 17. The 
estimate is next revised and definitively fixed. 18. It is sent to the Mayor 
again. 19. The Council is once more assembled. 20. It approves the 
definitive estimate. 21. The Council next draw up a memoir to show that 
for the purpose in hand an appropriation should be made, with documentary 
evidence to prove that the commune is able to pay. 22. The request to 
open a credit, or make an appropriation, is sent, with the estimate, and all 
the documents in the case, to the Sub-Prefect. 23. The pile of papers is 
next sent to the Prefect, or chief officer of the department. 24. In his office 
the documents are divided; what relates to the appropriation goes to 
the Financial bureau, and the rest to the bureau of Public Works. 25. The 
request for the appropriation is finally forwarded by the Prefect to the 
Minister of Finance at Paris. 26. As in that Ministry matters are taken 
up in their turn, it is some time before the petition is taken into account, 
but finally the Minister gives his decision. 27. This decision is laid before 
the Chief of the State, President, or Emperor, as the case may be. 28. 
That functionary makes his decision. 29. This decision goes to the Minis- 
ter. 30. The decision of the Government goes to the Prefect. 31. He 
sends it to the Sub- Pre feet. 32. He to the Mayor. 33. The detailed es- 
timate of the cost goes to the Minister. 34. It is given to the chief of the 



3G THE NEW ROME. 

proper bureau. 35. It is examined in the bureau. 36. It goes to the Min- 
ister again. 37. The Minister examines it 38. It is sent to the Commis- 
sion for Civil Works. 39. The pile of documents is now taken apart and 
classified, and remains till its turn comes. 40. The Commission assemble, 
and the papers are given to a reporter. 41. The reporter draws up his 
report. 42. The report is read before the Commission, and alterations in 
the plan are agreed on. 43. The documents are now sent to the Minister. 
44. From the Minister to the Prefect. 45. From him to the Sub- Prefect. 
46. From him to the Mayor. 47. He again calls together the Town Coun- 
cil. 48. The Council agrees to the proposed alterations. 49. Now the 
whole is sent to the architect with an explanatory letter. 50. The archi- 
tect changes his plan and estimates accordingly. 51. The new plan and 
estimates go to the Mayor. A greater appropriation is required, and the 
whole weary process is gone through again, involving twenty-four distinct 
operations. 75. The documents having at last accomplished their rounds, 
and become legitimate, are deposited in the Register's office. 16. Pro- 
posals to do the work are advertised for. 11. The bids are examined and 
the work adjudged. 78. The adjudication is registered. 79. The certifi- 
cate of this transaction is sent to the Sub-Prefect. 80. He sends it to the 
Prefect. 81. He to the Minister. 82. The Minister approves it. 83, 84, 
85. The approval is sent to the Prefect, the Sub-Prefect, the Mayor. 86. 
The Mayor informs the architect. 87. The Mayor informs the contractor. 
88. The approval of the Minister is added to the documents. 89. The 
Register is notified of the same, in writing, of course. 90. The record of 
the proceedings is registered. 91. It is sent back to the Mayor. 92. The 
record of proceedings is completed, and the approval of the estimate be- 
comes complete. Now the work may begin, but the business of document- 
making is not over. When the architect has got through, a certificate is 
required. 93. The certificate goes to the Sub-Prefect, 94. From him to 
the Prefect. 95. From him to the Minister. 96. The Minister approves 
it. 97, 98, 99. It is sent back to the Prefect, the Sub-Prefect, the Mayor. 
100. An order is issued for the payment of the money. 

" Such is a specimen of the mechanism by which the French people 
are held in leading strings. When M. Thiers was Prime Minister, a com- 
mune on the Adour found that a bridge was out of order, and asked per- 
mission to repair it. The petition was sent up in the summer, and 
went through all the motions above described, as a matter of course. 
Finally, next spring there came a decree of the Government appointing a 



POLITICS. 37 

Commission to examine the bridge and see whether it really needed re- 
pairing. But, alas, the frosts and floods of winter had, in the mean time, 
entirely overthrown the disordered structure, and no bridge remained for 
the Commissioners to examine !" 

Such is the political aspect of the most flourishing state 
on the globe ; such the promises it holds out to the future. 
Two leading maxims rule its policy : the first that, wherever 
government is not to be dispensed with, it must be adminis- 
tered as far as possible by those to be subjected to its agency ; 
the other, and greater, that government must be tolerated 
only where it is indispensable. Government is force, and 
force is wrongful whenever it does more than ward off the 
attack of other forces. Self-defence from force is the whole 
sphere of legitimate politics ; and mutual defence the sole 
mission of the state. The individual is to be subject to no 
compulsory influence but its own: the absolute and indefea- 
sible sovereignty of the individual is the all-engrossing 
principle of American polity. The American state is a 

MUTUAL GUARANTEE OF INDIVIDUAL SOVEREIGNTY. 

It is an American discovery : the very enunciation of the 
canon is the work of Josiah Warren, the greatest of American 
thinkers. Never before has the individual achieved this high 
estate. " I am myself alone," is the motto which expresses 
English aspirations and American policy. It is this all-suffi- 
ciency of the individual which accounts for the marvellous 
elasticity of American life. The pioneer, alone upon the 
boundless prairie, is conscious of possessing in himself all the 
elements that make up the greatness of the American con- 
federacy ; and wherever two or three of them are assembled 



38 T H E N E W R O'M E . 

together, the spirit of American freedom is among them, 
teaching them to form an organization more suitable to their 
circumstances, freer, and therefore stronger than the old 
constitutions of which it is an improved edition. Theodore 
Parker informs us that a New England shipmaster, wrecked 
on an island in the Indian sea, was seized by his conquerors, 
and made their chief; their captain became king ; and after 
years of rule, he managed to escape. Then he once more 
visited his former realm. He found that the savages had 
carried him to heaven and worshipped him as a god, greater 
than their fancied deities. He had revolutionized divinity, 
and was himself enthroned as a god. 

Westward the tide has turned ; the beaver territories of 
Minesota and Nebraska are filling up ; the Saints of the 
Latter Day have established a prosperous community in the 
bosom of the Rocky Mountains ; Oregon and California are 
outstripping them all. Another current has turned south- 
wards ; inferior to the first, yet strong enough to replenish 
Texas, and build cities, as Aspinwall, upon the Isthmus. 

We have thus far considered America in its relation to 
other countries in a merely mechanical or mathematical as- 
pect ; like a star with its right ascension and declination. It 
is time to resort to a chemical analysis, and examine the 
various qualities of its ingredients. 

Extraction. 
In estimating the property of these various elements, we 
must not be understood to chime in with the mystical jargon 



POLITICS. 39 

of ethnographers, which would substitute a nobility of nation- 
ality for a nobility of class ; there is no elementary difference 
of nationalities in the civilized world, unresolvable by the 
universal categories of cause and effect, no more than there 
is any elementary difference of individual character. The dis- 
position of man is formed by the circumstances which educate 
him ; so nations, which consist of individuals, are educated 
by national circumstances, events, and traditions ; the prevail- 
ing tendency of those traditions will produce a prevailing 
tendency of national characteristics ; but that tendency may 
be overcome by subsequent events in the masses, or entirely 
neutralized by circumstances in the individual. We deny no 
man his political rights, on the score of his national extrac- 
tion ; but we would have the weight of national authority 
determined by a just and scientific standard. 

Seven hundred and fifty years before the present era, a 
city was founded on the coast of Italy. In eight centuries it 
had spread its empire over Western and Southern Europe. 
The traces of that empire endure to this day, in the shape of 
its language, the most pervading, most controlling, and most 
ineradicable tradition which can be imposed upon humanity. 
The nations speaking that language still acknowledge in An- 
cient Rome 

The dead but sceptred sovereigns that still rule 
Our spirits from their urns. 

In the Orbis Terrarum, under Csesar's sway, the Latin race 
achieved its first universality. 



40 THE NEW ROME. 

With the decline of the first Roman empire began the rise 
of the second ; its element was religion, a tradition second in 
influence to language alone. The Church attained its splen- 
dour when Charles V. founded an empire on which the sun 
never set, and Michael Angelo raised the throne of science and 
art. In the Holy Catholic (!) Church, the Romanic race 
achieved its second universality. 

The brighter the light behind, the darker the shadow be- 
fore. For fifteen hundred years it was supposed that no lan- 
guage but that of Rome deserved the name. Gioberti has 
written a book to prove that Rome is destined again to lead 
the world ; who can blame him for forgetting himself in the 
contemplation of that wondrous past 1 

In the decadence of the Church the world bethought itself 
of civilization. Louis XIV. established in Paris the centre of 
civilization ; Napoleon grasped its boundaries. The " civilized 
life" of Paris is a tradition which now holds us almost as 
firmly as that of religion itself. In the French empire the 
Catholic race achieved its third universality, — Can this sum- 
mit be attained more than three times 1 The labor of his- 
tory tires ; and the Romanic race has been at work for 2,600 
years. Old forms cannot bend to every new spirit ; and old 
heads cannot for ever learn new lessons. America began as 
a province of the Holy Catholic Church ; it was opened by 
Italian genius, in the service of Spanish wealth; but the 
Catholic supremacy has been driven from the Huron to the 
Mississippi, from the Mississippi to the Cordilleras, and from 
them to the Pacific ; where it yet exists, it languishes ; 



POLITICS. 41 

America is destined to mature and develop other than 
Romanic traditions. The French are at this time as much 
prostrated in their political and social condition as the Ger- 
man or English laborers ; yet their emigration amounts to 
nothing. True, the bulk of emigrants for the past ten years 
have been of Irish descent, and the Irish, though never Latin- 
ized, are united by religious and civilitary traditions to their 
brethren of Gaul, and severed by the remembrance of oppres- 
sion from the German race, who have driven their kindred 
out of Britain. But these influences are counterbalanced by 
that of the English language, in which they have been edu- 
cated ; the career of such men as Jackson and Clay is a proof 
of their perfect adaptability to American institutions. Besides, 
the balance of immigration is now turning, or has already 
turned, in favor of the Germans. Ireland has six millions of 
inhabitants, now equally divided between the English and 
Celtic races. Whatever proportion of the latter class is yet 
to be expected on our shores, still the probable delegation 
from the forty millions of Germany must far out-number 
them. The official returns already give this result. 

The following are the statistics of arrivals at the port of 
New York alone, for the last four years : — 

1849. 1S50. 1851. 1552, to Sept. 22d. 

Germany, 55,705 45,402 69,883 92,686 

Ireland, 112,251 v 116,532 163,256 88,664 

Other countries, 56,647 50,862 56,462 45,626 

Total, 220,603 212,796 289,601 226,976 

That this movement is not on the decline, appears from 



42 THE N E W ROME. 

the fact that on the 23d, 24th, and 25th of September, the 
three days ensuing the close of the above table. 

The number of arrivals at New York was, 12,500 

For the remaining days of September, 10,577 

For October, 20,115 

Add the previous immigration of 1852, 226,976 

Total of 1852, to October 31st, 270,168 

Taking the immigration of October, (20,115) as the stand- 
ard for November and December, we have 40,230 

Add, 270,1 68 

Emigrants landing at New York in 1852, 310,398 

According to the standard subsisting from January 1st, to 
September 22, 1852, this aggregate consists of the following 
ingredients: — 

Germans, 129,662 

Irish, 124,159 

Other countries, 56,577 

The following article, from the New York Tribune of Nov. 
3, 1852, will further illustrate this subject : 

•'"We publish this morning some tables made up from the census returns 
of 1850, which throw positive light upon the much agitated questions of the 
sources from which is derived that great amalgam called the American 
people. Though they refer only to the population of this state, they afford 
satisfactory grounds for judging as to the proportion in which the different 
elements exist throughout the republic. 

" It appears, that out of 3,097,358 souls which compose the population 
of New York, 2,439,296 were born in the United States ; 84,820 in Eng- 
land; 343,111 in Ireland; 31,000 in Scotland and Wales; 118,398 in Ger- 
many ; 47,200 in British America ; and that the number of residents of 
foreign birth in all the state is 65S,062, — or about two-ninths of the whole 
people. 



POLITICS. 43 

" If we suppose that this proportion liokls good for the entire Union, 
the result will be that there are in the country a little more than five mil- 
lions of residents of foreign birth, including two and a half millions of Irish- 
men, 910,000 Germans, as many of English, Scotch, and Welsh taken to- 
gether, about 90,000 French, and about 140,000 from other countries 
of Europe. But it is doubtful whether New York can thus be taken as 
the standard for the whole republic, possessing as it does the principal 
sea-port for the arrival of immigrants, and retaining in its metropolis and 
other cities and their vicinity a large part of those who enter the country. 
And although the Western and North-western states may show a rather 
greater relative number of foreign inhaoitants, it must be borne in mind 
that the Southern states, with the exception of Texas, have comparatively 
few. 

" The number of natives of New England in the state is smaller than 
we had supposed, there being of them no more than 206,630, while of 
natives of the other states, aside from New York itself, there are 288,100. 
It is curious to notice how equally the Yankees are distributed throughout 
all the counties, while the people from other states, like those of foreign 
birth, are more congregated in the great centres of business. The Germans 
and Irish, however, exceed all other races in the tenacity with which they 
cling to the cities. More than half the whole number in the state are in 
this city and vicinity, while in the strictly agricultural counties there are 
comparatively few, especially of Germans. In New York and Brooklyn, 
not far from half the population is of foreign birth. The extent of the 
immigration from British America is striking ; it is almost as large as that 
from Massachusetts." 



Probably no city in the world, of any considerable popu- 
lation, exhibits such a heterogeneous people as the city of 
New York. Nations and tongues and kindred and people 
from all parts of the world are here, and our thoroughfares 
and hostelries are a perfect Babel of languages. In a five- 
minute walk you meet Christian, Jew, Turk and Gentile, 
bond and free, of all complexions and creeds. The following 
table, accurately copied from the Census Returns, shows 



44 



THE NEW ROME. 



the nativity of the people of the city of New York in June, 
1850: 



Bom in Number. 

State of New York, 234,843 

Maine, 1,432 

New Hampshire, 826 

Vermont, 953 

Massachusetts, 5,587 

Rhode Island, 961 

Connecticut, 7,784 

New Jersey, 13,255 

Pennsylvania, 5,283 

Delaware, 393 

Maryland, 1,852 

District of Columbia, 261 

Virginia, 1,702 

North Carolina, 284 

South Carolina, 535 

Georgia, 277 

Florida, 54 

Alabama, 90 

Mississippi, 83 

Louisiana, 303 

Texas, 23 

Arkansas, 2 

Tennessee, 26 

Kentucky, 122 

Ohio, 4-99 

Michigan, 86 

Indiana, 41 

Illinois, 72 

Missouri, 56 

Iowa, 4 

Wisconsin, 28 

California, 4 



Territories of U. S.,. 



31 



Total IT. S., 277,752 



Bom in Number. 

England, 22,824 

Ireland, 133,730 

Scotland, 7,660 

Wales, 847 

Germany, 55,476 

France, 4,990 

Spain, 303 

Portugal, 128 

Belgium, 95 

Holland, 611 

Turkey, 8 

Italy, 703 

Austria, 109 

Switzerland, 764 

Russia, 472 

Norway, 216 

Denmark, 292 

Sweden, 499 

Prussia, 665 

Sardinia, 

Greece, 

China, 27 

Asia, 13 

Africa 49 

British America, 3,171 

Mexico, 40 

Central America, 10 

South America, 105 

West Indies, 687 

Sandwich Islands, 12 

Other Countries, 1,129 

Unknown, 2,062 

At Sea, 39 



Total out of U.S...... 237,795 



Total Population of the City, 515,547 



POLITICS. 45 

The main influence of the Romanic tribes, which is even 
now perceptible in this country, is that exerted upon the 
national taste ; the love of elegance and lightness, and the 
horror of the " clumsy," manifested in our constructive arts, 
in which we differ widely from both England and Germany, 
is the gift of an old, long-cultivated race, which a younger 
one easily learns, but does not so quickly originate. 

That younger race is the Germanic. At the opening of 
our present era they massacred three legions in the Teutoburg 
forest; this was their protest against the Roman universality. 
In eight hundred years they had attained, under Charlemagne 
and Alfred, a qualified universality of their own ; its legacy, 
under the vulgar appellation of feudalism, but which was only 
a crude form of individualism, — the organized opposition of 
a free rural population to the edicts of a conquering city, has 
been, in most of its essentials, preserved to the present day. 
In the sixteenth century, by the Reformation, they entered 
their protest against the Catholic universality ; which they 
have followed up by the pursuit of utilitarianism in England, 
and of metaphysics in Germany. Each of these nations has 
performed its allotted task to perfection, forgetting entirely 
that of the other : Germany has solved the mysteries of 
heaven ; England has held the World's Fair. The battle of 
Waterloo overturned the French universality. 

The German race has thus been engaged in protesting for 
eighteen centuries and a half, and has yet six hundred years 
time to equal the glories of its elder sister. In this peculi- 
arity of its employment we discover the peculiarity of its 



46 THE NEW ROME. 

tendencies : while Rome and Paris have arrived only at 
dominions, 

Parcere mbjectis, ac debellare superbos ; 

Teutonia has sought only freedom, veiled in such homely 
adages as " Let me alone," — or " Mind your own business." 
A mutual guarantee of the right of the individual to be let 
alone, is the perfect political manifestation of the German 
spirit ; it will be realized in the universality of the American 
Union. It has not been brought to perfection in Europe ; 
and therefore the European Germans are ready to seek it 
elsewhere ; they show none of that indisposition to emigrate 
which characterizes the heirs of Roman glory. The Puritans 
first sheltered the Germanic principle on our shores ; Penn 
followed, with a far truer appreciation of it ; while the Puri- 
tans could only attract Puritans from England, Penn gathered 
round him the individuals of every Germanic nation. Penn- 
sylvania deserves the name of the Keystone State, not from 
its locality, which is no longer significant, but from the origin 
of its settlement, which displays more clearly than that of 
every other member of the union, the broad difference be- 
tween Europe and America. From the coasts of the Atlantic 
the Anglo-Saxon empire has now overspread the continent, 
and grown as much in inward ripeness as in outward size. 
In the revolution it threw off foreign shackles ; in the forma- 
tion of the Union it asserted its own vitality. These two 
achievements are the work of the Anglo-Saxons ; to the con- 
tinental Germans falls the task of completing this political 



.POLITICS. 47 

and social fabric, by the crowning addition of perfect religious 
liberty, science, and the ideal arts ; a task for which their 
home education has admirably fitted them. Their duty is 
that of the exiles from Constantinople, after its destruction 
by the Ottomans : the Revival of Letters in the West. 

There is a third race in Europe, the Sclavonic. They are 
young, fresh, and healthy, the nearest relatives of the Ger- 
mans, and remarkably susceptible of cultivation. They are 
pupils of Germany in all matters of science and art, and will 
improve upon what we impart to them, as the young stems 
of the forest give a fresher growth to the sprig of the fruit- 
tree that is engrafted upon them. 
/ Enough has been adduced to prove that the American 
republic is destined to possess the continent of which it bears 
the name, and to share it, by absorption, with the inhabitants 
of all the lands of the earth. America is the crucible in yj 
which European, Asiatic, and African nationalities and pecu- 
liarities are smelted into unity. "We have assigned to the 
Romanic nations the station of venerable old age, giving 
counsel from its treasured experiences ; to the Germanic, the 
lusty action of maturity, just emancipated from tutelage ; and 
to the Sclavonic, the eager attention of early youth, looking 
on anxiously while the men are working, and proud some- 
times to offer assistance. V But a more gloomy future is pre- 
sented when we turn from the sons of Europe to the Africans, 
Asiatics, and Indians. Let us see if the probe of science, ap- 
plied to this sore point of the body politic, by the hand of calm 
but earnest inquiry, will not detect the possibility of a cure. 



48 THE NEW ROME. 

The Black Question. 

Man is a single species ; but the species has several vari- 
eties. Differences of tribe may produce such distinctions as 
are traceable between Spaniards and Poles ; but to refer the 
difference found between a white man and a negro, to the 
same origin, to the influences simply of climate, diet, and 
education, is contrary to all experience and analogy ; the dif- 
ferent varieties of the human species were produced at differ- 
ent times and places of the earth's development. Mere 
difference of place gives no satisfactory explanation ; for the 
geological structure of the earth's surface is, in general, every 
where the same. In this the human species is but like every 
other ; its grosser varieties, produced earlier, resemble, though 
they are never absorbed in, the most elevated varieties of the 
next species below them. It is vain to deny the resemblance 
of man and monkey ; nor will the avowal of this truth im- 
pair our conviction of others, inculcated by equally unerring 
instincts : no man is a monkey ; the species is separated 
from every other by an impassable gulf, which makes its 
unity as a species impregnable. 

" The word" is found in man alone, and in all men ; 
speech is the flower whence all the perfume of the world is 
distilled. It is the organ of the exclusively human faculty, 
the understanding, the classification of perceptions and im- 
pressions. Beasts feel, and therefore know good and evil ; 
they will, and therefore know the beautiful and the ugly ; but 
they speak not, because they do not think. Man thinks, and 



POLITICS. 49 

therefore discerns the true and the false, the right and the 
wrong. Every being capable of distinguishing between right 
and wrong is entitled to the rights of man. 

The different varieties must have originated when the 
cooling process produced upon the earth's surface by its inces- 
sant eradiation, had attained very various stages. The blacks 
probably came into existence when the earth's surface emitted 
a far greater quantity of heat than it does at present, — and 
when, perhaps, the sun threw out a far more intense light 
than it now does ; light has more effect upon color than heat 
has, although they are nearly related. The number of varie- 
ties is evidently greater than has been supposed ; the younger 
ones are few and clearly marked, but the inferior ones multi- 
farious and not easily distinguishable. Nowhere, perhaps, is 
the human formation more crude and clumsy than in the 
aborigines of Australia. They have, in common with the 
negro, the sooty complexion, projecting jaws, and thick lips ; 
but are distinguished by straight hair, and long baboon limbs. 
They live on trees, use wooden spears, and ornament their 
bodies by the incision of hyena-like stripes. Their language 
admits no form of the verb but the infinitive mood ; and 
they cannot count beyond seven. Not a trace of religious 
ideas or customs has been discovered among them. They 
are inferior to the negro race, which is not confined to Africa, 
but found in the Bhils of Maleva, in India, in the Kails of 
Guzerat, in the Kairs and in Australia, New Guinea and Van 
Diemen's Land, New Caledonia and the New Hebrides. 

Their physical formation, if not beautiful, is at least strong 
3 



50 T II K N E W 11 O M E . 

and full ; but their unassisted moral endowments hardly de- 
serve the name. They are cannibals by nature ; their polity 
is that of a savage despotism ; their religion, the fear of 
a fetish; an unearthly howl or juba dance, their highest 
artistic attainment. The Hottentots of South Africa, though 
their color indicates a later origin, are not superior in 
mental, and inferior in physical, development. The Kaffirs 
manifest a slight advance ; they are sometimes handsome, 
and occasionally lay aside the war-club for the shepherd's 
staff. 

The Malays have a brown complexion, of various shades, 
are well built but small, have long straight black hair, flat 
noses, and large lips. They inhabit Malacca, Java, Borneo, 
the Philippines and Moluccas, and the Polynesian Archipel- 
ago. They have attained the art of navigation, a priestly 
order, stated feasts and ceremonies, and some organization of 
government. But their praise is soon told. 

The North American Indians, though inferior to the last 
in external civilization, have a singularly flexible language, 
the art of petrifying speech by strings of shells, a very clear 
consciousness of spirit, and republican institutions ! The 
reflective turn of their character suggests the idea of a com- 
munication previously subsisting, and now severed, with men 
of a higher order ; for they do not bear any of the character- 
istics of being themselves wrecks of a decayed civilization. 
The country they now inhabit wears the traces of an extinct 
race, of which we lived to see the extinction. In the con- 
structive arts, they seem to have advanced as far beyond the 



POLITICS. 51 

Indians as the latter surpassed them in moral refinement. 
They made an art of architecture, and lived in cities. 

The race next in order is one which must ever be marvel- 
lous to us, for it has possessed, from time immemorial, a 
civilization, and an industrial community. The Mogul race 
numbers one-third of the inhabitants of the globe. It seems 
to be endowed with all that is denied the Indians, and denied 
all with which they are endowed. The Chinese and Japanese 
have no spiritual insight, no political liberty, a copious but 
monosyllabic tongue, and, though no human meals or sacri- 
fices, a great variety of customary and official murders. But 
they possess the art of writing ; use the plough, the loom, and 
the anvil ; any amount of good government, law, and order ; 
the culture of silk, gunpowder, the magnet, and the printing- 
press. Their astronomical observations date far beyond our 
earliest records, and in chemistry they possess a great variety 
of knowledge. Their annals date far back ; the last three 
thousand contain well-authenticated history ; but they make 
no mention of a time when their civilization was less perfect 
than it is at present. Yet how many ages must have been 
required to bring three hundred and seventy millions of 
people to so uniform a stage of advancement ! 

The Chinese have formed an isolated race, owing nothing 
to their neighbors, and exerting no influence upon them. 
They have no history, neither love of conquest nor patriot- 
ism. When their neighbors became troublesome, they shut 
them out with a wall. 

It is with a sentiment of awe that we now approach that 



52 THE KEff ROME. 

race whose early civilization has come down in direct line 
to us. 

The highlands of Abyssinia, the unseen sources of the 
Nile, are their cradle. They came down the mighty stream, 
and settled in the lower parts of its valley. There they 
attained a civilization, the half-forgotten ruins of which, in 
sublimity and vastness, are immeasurably beyond the freshest 
products of any later time. The key to their records of 
stone and rock has now been discovered ; and instead of 
enlisting attention as the products of rude, unlettered ages, 
they are becoming the text-books from which our modern 
scholars derive their lessons of wisdom. Science then and 
there attained a summit on which it has never stood before, 
and which in principle it never has surpassed since. 

Another branch of the Abyssinian race found its way to 
the Euphrates, built the cities of Nineveh and Babylon, and 
founded the first empires, the Assyrian and Babylonian. 
They spread, not always their dominion, but their tribe over 
Arabia and Syria, where we find them assuming the names 
of Phoenicians and Hebrews, and the surrounding nomadic 
tribes. These had frequent communication with the Egyp- 
tian Kingdom ; but their visits were not always peaceable ; a 
race of " hyksos," " shepherd kings," invaded that country, 
and for a time were the lords of the lower part of Egypt. 
They built the great pyramids, which are not the productions 
of the original Egyptian dynasty. The Egyptians rallied, how- 
ever, and in their turn drove the shepherd kings out of the 
country, after a struggle, which, like that of the Goths in 



POLITICS. 53 

Spain, lasted four hundred years. The fugitives assumed the 
name of Pelasgi, or Philistines, — exiles, — and thus com- 
menced the settlement of the Mediterranean coast, in Greece 
and Italy. The origin of the Pelasgi is a recent discovery 
of Professor Roeth, and was only ascertained by means of 
the Egyptian records. 

The Hellenes of history are not descended from the Pelasgi ; 
they belong to the youngest of earth's sons, the race now 
dominant over the globe. The term " Caucasian," applied 
by former ethnographers to what was looked upon as a 
single race, embracing all the white portions of humanity, 
was disused when found in conflict with the primary division 
of languages, into the Indo-Ger manic and Semitic ; the latter 
being spoken by what is now known to be a distinct race, 
the Abyssinian. The difference between the two is very 
marked ; the people of Israel are distinguishable by their 
personal appearance at a glance, even in the British Parlia- 
ment or the American Senate. The Indo-Germanic race is 
inaptly called from two links of the chain, without any ref- 
erence to the whole. They issue from the gorges of the 
Hindoo Khoo, and it is in Persia and India that they first 
attained political power. ' The Persians and the Indians 
called themselves " Arians," " first," " early," from the same 
radix as dptoroi the " erst," or best ; an appellation which 
their descendants need not discard. 

A branch of the Arian race spread southwardly, and es- 
tablished an advanced civilization on the banks of the Indus 
and the Ganges. It is now found to be much younger than 



54 THE NEW ROME, 

was formerly supposed, dating but little beyond the Chris- 
tian era. 

The Chaldees were Arians, not so much a people as an 
order of sages, the immediate pupils of Zoroaster, the first 
of speculative religionists. They were admitted to the 
courts of the Assyrian kings, but the intercourse of the two 
races did not long remain friendly. 

The Hebrew civilization sprung from the Abyssinian, but 
was early affected by Arian influences. Moses fled from the 
court of Memphis to Ur of the Chaldees, and returned with 
that system of legislation which he succeeded in impressing 
so deeply upon the character of his people. 

The branch of the Arians that emigrated westward, settled 
Greece and Italy. Here they established the undoubted 
superiority of the race over every other ; they alone have pro- 
duced artists, they alone have given free scope to the instinct 
of the beautiful in man. They learned the useful arts from 
the Egyptians, but idealized them into the fine arts ; the 
palaces of their masters they transformed into temples; 
their dogmas into myths ; their graven records into dancing 
rhythms. The north-western current was subdivided into the 
Celts, Germans, and Sclaves ; with some intermediate ones, 
as the Scythians, Lithuanians, Magyars, &c. The Celts are 
the people of Spain, Wales, Erse, (Irish,) Gael, (Highland 
Scotch,) and Belgium. The Germans are threefold: the High 
Germans, south of Saxony and Hessia; the Low Germans, 
(including the Dutch and English,) and the Scandinavians in 
Denmark, Sweden, and Norway; to the Sclaves belong the 



POLITICS. 55 

Russians, Cossacks, Poles, Crechs, (Bohemians,) and Ser- 
vians. The languages of all these nations are identical, 
while they treat of pastoral subjects, but diverge when they 
approach matters of higher civilization ; a sign of the stage 
at which the separation of those tribes took place. 

The overthrow of the Assyrian kingdom by the Persians 
was the first of these struggles for the supremacy or extinc- 
tion between the two highest races of man, which lasted 
through the wars of Xerxes and Alexander, the Punic 
struggle, the successes of the Saracens, and the crusades ; in 
which the Arians finally remained masters of the field, rather 
from the exhaustion of their antagonists, than from victories 
of their own. 

The Greeks, as has been shown, were the offspring of a 
fusion of Abyssinians, Pelasgi, and of the Hellenic family. 
The Romans were likewise a mixture of Etrurians, of Pelas- 
gian origin, and of Arians. Thus the noblest races of ancient 
history were produced by a mixture of varieties. 

In the new Rome the elementary ingredients are more 
multiform than any that have hitherto been brought to- 
gether; the Arians and the Black are here found in inces- 
sant contact. Will this juxtaposition remain ? Experience 
and reason answer, no. Perfection is a goal of nature, of 
instinct, and of thought; and neither of these agents will 
permit the most perfect and the most gross examples of the 
same species long to continue side by side ; the unity of races 
must be accomplished. But how? By the murder of the 
inferior race? No one is here to propose it. By expatriation. 



56 THE NEW ROME. 

as attempted in some of the states? A nugatory game of 
battledore and shuttlecock, which could have no other effect 
than that of making confirmed vagrants of men who might be 
useful servants ; one of the few means by which a servile war 
might be made possible, or which would at all events produce 
a race of professed outlaws ; a measure cruel in view of our 
boundless natural wealth and sparse population, and in direct 
violation of the fundamental American rights of life, liberty, 
and the pursuit of happiness ; one to which the American peo- 
ple will never descend. Neither will it be by the dogmatical 
assertion of the fancied equality of the races, and the deter- 
mination to raise the inferior race, by artificial means, into social 
stations to which neither their natural gifts nor their natural 
inclinations would elevate them. The remedy is found, not 
in governmental theories, but in the provisions of nature. 

There is a deep-seated, instinctive horror of amalgamation 
among the American people ; it is but the expression of the 
natural law that a higher order of beings must not be deterio- 
rated by admixture with a lower. This ensues by the cohabit- 
ation of the male of the lower race with the female of the 
higher ; the ovum of the latter being thus tainted. Nature 
herself is said to militate against this outrage. But in the 
case of a white male and a black female, the ovum is im- 
proved ; and this process is said to be no less promoted by 
the prevailing inclination of colored females, than indulged by 
public opinion among the whites ; the fruits of it are, at all 
events, continually gaining ground, and the pure black race 
becoming thinner. So strictly is this law observed, that where 



POLITICS. 57 

the colored race is most numerous, all the grades of admix- 
ture are exactly noted, and, while the cross of the lower breed 
by the higher is freely permitted, the reverse is universally 
condemned by those of every color. 

The " white- washing " process thus commenced, eventually 
will efface all traces of the black race not capable of advan- 
tageous admixture with the white. The political emancipation 
of the slaves must take place much sooner ; as soon as the 
two main obstacles have yielded to the demands of time. 
The one of these is the political and social immaturity of the 
white laborer, which still gives the non-laboring portion of 
the community a factitious superiority ; the other the super- 
stition that the colored race are equal to the white in capacity, 
and will be able, when their political trammels are removed, 
to usurp that social station which an instinct truer than 
theory denies them. When the fear is radically removed that 
the slave, if emancipated, will possess the address and cunning 
to enslave his former master, that master will prefer his free 
labor, and freedom from responsibility when he does not 
labor, to his possession as an often useless chattel. When 
we no longer fear that they will induce our daughters to 
marry them, we shall no longer uphold laws against such 
marriages ; when we no longer fear that they will become 
Presidents and Senators, overbearing the influence of white 
statesmen, we shall no longer deny them the right to be 
elected. The slave must be emancipated and invested with 
the rights of citizenship. ' He is not now in the position that 
belongs to him ; in the abstract that proposition needs no 
3* 



58 THE NEW ROME. 

proof, and in practice it is proved by the stampedes of 
twenty and thirty constantly recurring, and by the " five 
hundred lashes, not more than thirty-nine at one time, to 
be administered only when, in the physician's opinion, he 
could bear them," which was the sentence pronounced upon 
the slave Henry, at Charlestown, Va., for attempting to. kill 
Mr. Harrison Anderson, because " it is in accordance with 
the law of the land, and because the insubordination 

AMONG THE SLAVES OF THE STATE HAS BECOME TRULY 

alarming." Calhoun was right in saying that the days of 
slavery are numbered. - What is not accomplished by white 
competition, reinforced by the present unparalleled acces- 
sions from emigration, must be effected when the countless 
millions of Chinese, having saturated California, shall carry 
across the Rocky Mountains their admirable plantation labor, 
their hardihood, docility, industry, and light wages. The 
" white basis " progress of the Southern states, the pro- 
posal for dividing Virginia, followed up by the more recent 
one of dividing Texas, point to the inevitable current of 
events. It is in the interest of the white laborer to extin- 
guish the competition of forced labor ; and wherever the 
white laborer obtains a voice, it will be heard. A Chinese 
works for $3 a month ; an Indian Coolie for forty cents ; 
a sum for which a slave can never be fed and clothed. 
The blacks will find every where that natural position which 
they occupy in the Northern states ; they will be barbers, 
waiters, porters, and coachmen ; earning enough to meet 
their wants, and yet coming into no contact with white 



POLITICS. 59 

labor ; easy, yet never rich ; all gentlemen, but none of 
them business men ; fond of pleasure, and often of show, 
but never greedy of wealth or power. There is no greater 
sophistry than the affectation of pity for the Northern 
negro. " A slave without a master !" Having no master 
to impose it, his slavery is the imposure of his own incli- 
nation, in other words, his freedom ; the public opinion 
which restrains him from entering other spheres is rooted 
far more firmly in his own breast than in that of his white 
fellow-citizen ; all ambitious individuals among them have 
attained the goal of their ambition, with not more difficulty 
than falls to the lot of the w r hites. The black race of the 
free states is in fact happier than the white ; the task of 
the former is done, while the latter have their destiny yet 
to fulfil. In the clear apprehension of the social inferiority 
of the negro, we have the sure guarantee of his political 
redemption. 

4. — Mission. 

/ Thus intently is this republic at work upon the fusion of 
all nations, not of the continent alone, but of all continents, 
into one people. Will that people be satisfied with uniting 
the one continent *? Will they not see that the unity of all 
the people calls for a unity of the state ? Will not the 
emigrants who have found under these institutions the goal 
of their hopes, which they have vainly sought at home, deter- 
mine to extend the shadow of these institutions so as to ena- 
ble them to return to the lands of their birth, and re-establish 



60 THE NEW ROME. 

their social and industrial connections there, without resign- 
ing the political advantages once secured ? Will not their 
former compatriots determine to share these privileges with- 
out paying for them the price of expatriation 1 The internal 
trade of these states is almost incalculable ; the external 
commerce comparatively trifling. Hear Kossuth on the cause 
of the difference : — 

" Philadelphia is the first manufacturing city of the Union, but exports 
to foreign countries none of its products. Why so ? Because the only 
markets open in Europe are not fitted to these products, whilst despotism 
closes the markets for which they are fitted. Restricted markets, for in- 
stance, are open for highly finished cutlery, steam engines, or locomotives, 
which England can supply at cheaper rates ; but oppression and concom- 
itant poverty prevent all trade with at least one hundred and ten millions 
of the population of Eastern Europe, who have shown that they would 
eagerly purchase and prefer American-made axes, steam-engines, and lo- 
comotives, to hew down their forests, and traverse their loved plains, and 
magnificent water-courses, on which all enterprise now slumbers ; the whole 
Russian Empire not having a fraction of the railway lines laid down in 
the small state of Belgium. 

" As there is every reason why, but for the poverty attendant on bad 
government, the eastern frontier of the European continent should trade 
more largely with the United States than the western, it may fairly be pre- 
sumed that the overturn of despotism in these regions, inhabited by one 
hundred and twenty millions of people, and the establishment there of free 
government, would rapidly raise the commerce of the United States with 
those countries above the average of France and Belgium, which would give 
three or four-fold its trade to the entire continent of Europe, or twenty-five 
times its whole present trade with Russia, Austria, and Prussia. The United 
States is, therefore, materially interested in these events. The philan- 
thropic point of view is the same for all nations. It is proved, by an almost 
unvarying scale, that according as a people is more or less liberally govern- 
ed, so is the quality of its food better or worse, and its material comforts 
augmented or diminished, and that, coincident with this augmentation or 
diminution, human fife is lengthened or abridged. The average of life in 



POLITICS. 61 

Russia is very little more than half what it is in Great Britain, and follows 
in intermediate countries precisely the ascending or descending scale of 
their liberality of government and physical well-being. 

" It may, therefore, fairly be pronounced that if the vast regions of 
Russia were blessed with free representative and responsible government, 
upwards of one million of human beings would not annually die, who now 
perish the victims of a system. What war was ever so bloody as the 
sacrifices required by such a Moloch ?" 



In the above extract we have italicized those passages 
which put to rest the hackneyed commonplace, that forms of 
government have nothing to do with " substantial welfare." 
Whatever gives power to one man, and takes it from another, 
must, by the law of human nature, be followed by the ad- 
vancement of the interests of the former to the detriment 
of the latter ; hence, where the power is in the few, the many 
cannot but suffer. But the connection is far more direct and 
pervading : wealth is the offspring of trade ; trade, of enter- 
prise ; enterprise, of will ; will, of ambition; and ambition, 
of liberty.- He who is taught to submit to political wrongs, 
is trained to submit to physical discomforts ; he who is re- 
lieved from political bondage, is restive at the pressure of 
worldly circumstances, and determined to become independent 
of their control. This thirst of social independence is nothing 
more nor less than the " demand" on which the political 
economists base their calculations ; a plant that never did, 
and never will flourish, but on the soil of political liberation. 
America is so thinly peopled, that if its inhabitants were dis- 
posed to rest satisfied with the physical condition of the 
European masses, each family might sit under its own log- 



62 THE NEW ROME. 

cabin eaves, reckless of, and unknown to the others. But by 
virtue of their sovereignty, these American hundreds main- 
tain a briskness of intercourse hardly inferior to that of the 
crowded serfs of Europe, even in those regions where that 
serfdom is least oppressive. Make political sovereigns of 
these serfs, and they would issue their sovereign " demand" 
for social independence, in tones that would increase their 
industry in American proportion, and make our trade with 
them as active as that now maintained among ourselves. 
The difference thus perpetuated is an embargo upon Ameri- 
can industry for the benefit of European monarchs ; it is but 
another form of the " taxation without representation," which 
first called forth the American revolution, and which must 
call it forth again, so soon as it is felt ; and felt it will be, 
whenever the fields of the West shall be so far occupied by 
American settlers, and European and Chinese emigrants, as 
no longer to exhaust the expansiveness of the American 
people. 

If the welfare of Americans and Europeans is the standard 
of right and justice, then it is the right of both or either to 
demand a perfect freedom of mutual trade. But we have 
seen that free trade requires free government. The people, 
then, will never stop short of a mutual guarantee of republican 
governments; but republican government is only the insur- 
ance of the sovereignty of the individual, and that is the root 
and the core of the American institutions of '76 and '87. 
The American Union must infederate into its political pale 
all the countries with which it is brought into social contact. 



POLITICS. 63 

The American constitution is the political expression of the 
present phase of human development ; it must be co-existent 
and co-extensive with that which it expresses. 

The start of half horror and half derision w T ith which this 
idea is yet every where received, is found to proceed in the 
last resort from a remnant of European ism which is yet im- 
bedded in the American mind, and which we propose to 
eradicate by a brief historical analysis: the idea of nationality 
with its corollaries of national rights and national honor. 

Man's impulse is always fight; his afterthought friendship. 
Hence the first interview between man and man probably 
took the form of a " fall-to" about some blackberry bush, in 
which each claimed exclusive property. Perhaps the origin 
of the Trojan war is a fair type of the inception of human 
intercourse. These are the " foundations of the social struc- 
ture" which our conservatives are so anxious to preserve, and 
our progressives to reconstruct. These individual skirmishes 
continued until some particularly stalwart rowdy, by the 
terror of his prowess, induced two or three others to combine 
against him. This led to a counter-combination ; the fighting 
partnerships increased in numbers, and, from being established 
for special purposes, came to be regarded as standing asso- 
ciations for mutual defence and common aggression. This 
was the origin of the Tribe — the only political form of com- 
bination of which savages are capable. 

Fights between tribes are of course as inevitable as rows 
between individual savages. In general, being conducted 
without aim or purpose, they result in nothing but occasion- 



64 THE NEW ROME, 

ally the extermination of a tribe, or its incorporation with 
another. But at times some " mighty hunter," the chief of 
his tribe, would hit upon the expedient of subjugating an 
adverse tribe, without taking away its separate existence ; 
thus dividing, indeed, but at the same time expanding his 
power. These cunning hunters were soon established kings. 
Their cunning lies, and must lie, in their skill in perpetuating 
and extending their kingdoms — that is, their power over 
others, and the degradation of their victims. 

A king soon required a capital, a stronghold for himself, 
and a gathering-place for his immediate followers. Towns 
are in their origin the strongholds erected by kings. London 
Town is a suburb to the London Tower ; town and burg express 
bulwarks, or pallisades. The Tower of Babel is the city of 
Babylon; the building of Babylon was not in fact inter- 
rupted j the story of the confusion of tongues is therefore to 
be understood as the opinion of the Hebrews — who then had a 
purely rural constitution, without a king, and consequently 
without a pal — on the feasibility of such an undertaking: 
and the particular scruple is the best evidence of the fact that 
until men begem to build cities, their contrivances for the 
exchange of thought had not attained that degree of uniformity 
which entitled them to the name of language. This position, 
easily deduced from abstract principles — for the multiform 
contact of city life could alone create that demand of words 
necessary to produce a supply — is corroborated by all history. 
The English language arose when the English kings were 
finally settled at Westminster. The French had nothing but 



POLITICS. 65 

an inextricable jargon of patois until Louis XI. broke its 
liberties and its speech into the yoke of Paris. The Spanish 
and the Portuguese would be, like the Castilian and Arragon- 
ese, parts of one language, instead of forming two, but that 
Madrid was made the concentrating point of all the peninsula 
except that portion maintained by Lisbon. The Italian lan- 
guage is the reflexion of the Roman. The German is a pro- 
duct of a fusion of the idiom of the Hanseatic towns with 
that of the courts of Worms and Spires; it is, in its present 
shape, a very recent production of the German mind. 
Babylon, Memphis, Jerusalem, Athens, Rome, London, Paris, 
Vienna, Prague, Buda, the Escurial, and Moscow, all tell the 
histories of languages. 

The inhabitants of one town would send forth colonies ; 
and every language is the uniform medium of mental ex- 
change, adopted by a civic constellation, having a mother- 
town for its centre, and other towns planetary to the 
metropolis. 

Community of language is, despite all that Kossuth has 
urged to the contrary, the well-spring of every nationality. 
A man likes his " fellow-countryman" better than a foreigner, 
simply because with the former his intercourse is unembar- 
rassed, while with the latter it is difficult. The patriotism of 
nationality is found to arise in every instance, exactly when 
a fixed and matured language becomes the medium and the 
element of a fixed nationality. In the middle ages we have 
none of it. The empire of Charlemagne knew nothing of 
France, Germany, Italy, or Spain ; the distinctions were then 



66 T II E N E \Y HOME. 

only between " Christendom and Heathenesse."' La bella 
Italia had to be sung by Petrarch to become a popular 
watchword ; Chaucer is, in truth, the " pure well of English 
undefined." Spain was not mentioned until Cervantes and 
Vega wrote in Spanish ; nor Portugal as a nation, until Ca- 
moens wrote a Portuguese epic. La belle France is the fan- 
tasy of the court poets of Louis XIV. The German nation 
never thought of its own existence until the revolt of Lessing 
from the literary supremacy of the French, and the efforts of 
Klopstock. 

In so far as the growth of nations was the growth of an 
understanding between people of the same tongue to unite 
for mutual defence and assistance, it was an advance in the 
motions of humanity. But just as isolated individuals gradu- 
ally became aware of each other's existence, so these fictitious 
individuals, the nations, were necessarily brought into contact 
with each other. The result in both cases was the same. 
They fovght until they learned to talk together* " It has, 
from long observation of the progress of society, become a 
sort of axiom in politics," says the Federalist, p. 38, " that 
vicinity or nearness of situation constitutes nations natural 
enemies. An intelligent writer, the Abbe de Mably, in his 
Principes des Negotiations, expresses himself on this subject 
to this effect : " Neighboring nations (says he) are naturally 
enemies of each other, unless their common weakness forces 



* The Latin word hostis signifies foreigner, and is the same with hospes, 
guest and host. 



POLITICS. 67 

them to league in a confederate republic, and their consti- 
tution prevents the differences that neighborhood occasions, 
extinguishing that secret jealousy which disposes all states to 
aggrandize themselves at the expense of their neighbors. 
This passage at the same time points out the evil and the 
remedy." Wars are the results of mistaken ideas of interest 
and pride, possible only so long as the individual identifies 
his personal interests, not with those of humanity at large, 
but with those of a certain portion of humanity, with whom 
he speaks the same language, and whom he terms a nation. 
Nationality is the root of war. Nations, so soon as they 
become self-conscious, are associations of people for the pur- 
pose of taking away other people's land ; a nation may be 
defined to be an organization for making war on other 
nations, killing their subjects and pillaging their property, 
or of robbing them of their substance by the peaceful means 
of commercial and industrial competition. Wars require 
armies ; recurring wars, standing armies ; and armies, gener- 
als ; generalissimos are monarchs ; and thus the fictions of 
nationality are the causes of all the woes under which Europe 
is struggling. In 1848 the people rebelled against the ex- 
crescences of the principle ; but the rebellion was quelled by 
the yet unexpended force of the principle itself. Nationality, 
which enlisted the French republic against the Italian, caused 
the fall of both ; nationality, which set the Italian upon the 
German, the German upon the Magyar, the Magyar against the 
Sclavonian, the Sclavonian against the German, and the German 
against the Dane, overthrew the republic in Italy, Germany, 



68 THE NEW ROME. 

Hungary, Sclavonia, and Denmark, and reseated itself upon 
the ruins. Peoples without intercourse, a censorship without 
a literature, taxation without industry, custom-houses without 
commerce, and standing armies with none to fight against, 
but those they are paid to protect, and governments without 
law, — such aye the brilliant triumphs which nationality has 
achieved. Europe is a kitchen of hellish cauldrons, none of 
which are to be disturbed in their task of annihilating all that 
lives within them ; and the spirit of humanity sits like a 
prowling cat to w r atch the work of destruction, but forbidden, 
on pain of burning its paws, to meddle or interfere. 

This state of things, abnormal as it would appear, has been 
reduced into a doctrine. The " Law of Nations" is the formula 
which casts over these absurdities the mountebank's coat of 
pseudo-science. It was imposed by those who could; obeyed 
by those who would; expounded by those who were power- 
less to enforce it ; enforced or violated by those who made the 
case first, and the law afterwards. It is ex-post facto from 
beginning to end; it has neither judge, nor jury, nor sheriff. 
It could not be a law, without professing to expound rights; 
nor expound rights, without assigning them to persons ; nor 
treat of persons having rights, but by calling them sovereigns, 
for sovereignty is the fulness of rights. Its sovereigns are 
nations ; but they are fictitious sovereigns, because fictitious 
persons, and their rights fictitious rights ; they are never ap- 
pealed to but where it is required to prejudice the rights of 
individuals, which are the only real rights, because individuals 
are the only real persons, and therefore the only real sove- 



POLITICS. 69 

reigns. If an English power protests against the flogging of a 
sovereign Austrian woman, it is a violation of the right of the 
sovereign Austrian nation to flog its woman. If a British 
squadron vindicates the rights of sovereign Chinamen and 
sovereign Englishmen to mutual trade and intercourse, it is an 
invasion of the right of the sovereign Chinese nations to 
trammel the commerce of its subjects. If sovereign Ameri- 
can filibusters deny the right of a Captain-General to keep 
them out of an island not made with hands, called by Indians 
Cuba, and now monopolized and oppressed by Spaniards, they 
deny the sovereignty of the Spanish nation. In short, the 
law of nations is never vindicated but in opposition to the 
men and women of, in, and around those nations. 

The law of nations has been publicly repudiated by those 
for whose benefit it was originally established. " Three con- 
tracting monarchs, in accordance with the words of Holy 
Writ, would remain united in the bonds of an inseparable 
fraternity, look upon each other as fellow-countrymen, and in 
every case give each other aid and comfort ; and rule their 
subjects and their armies, whose fathers they were, in the 
same spirit and fraternity. Their only principle would 
therefore be that of mutual assistance. By unalterable kind- 
ness they hoped to preserve their mutual attachments, and 
to look upon each other as members of the same Christian 
people. They were mere attorneys of Providence, ordered 
to govern three branches of the same family." 

This declaration appeared on the 26th of September, 1815, 
over the signatures of the Austrian, Russian, and Prussian 



70 T 11 E N E \V U M E . 

potentates; it was followed up in 1821 by the resolution 
adopted at the Congress of Laybach, " to recognize the 

PRINCIPLE OF INTERVENTION IN ITS WIDEST SENSE, and Oil every 

occasion where the preservation of the existing conditions of 
their countries made it necessary, whether in reference to 
forms of government or to boundaries ;" and it has been 
unsuccessfully adhered to from that time to this. 

This remarkable change of tactics was owing to the 
discovery of a new principle which, aiming at political insti- 
tutions based upon science, inevitably tended to the overthrow 
of nationalities, which are political institutions based upon 
accident. The men of every nation had begun to suspect 
that their interests were one with those of certain men of 
other nations, and adverse to those of certain men of their 
own. The war of nations, which is based upon the alliance 
of governor and general in one nation, against the alliance of 
governor and general in another, had given place to the war 
of revolution, which is based upon the alliance of governors 
in all nations, against the alliance of governed in all. The 
former alliance preoccupied the title of Holy. The Profane 
Alliance is the subject of this essay. 

The revolution is the offspring of the only people which is 
not a nation. A gathering of all the exiles of the world, — 
and an exile is a man deprived of his nationality, rejected by 
his nation ; — an assemblage whose spring of action was 
disgust at the national cruelties from which they had fled ; — 
a convocation from all the corners of the world for conscience 
sake, for the preservation of this individual sovereignty 



POLITICS. 71 

against the encroachments of national traditions; — a horde of 
emigrants who knew nationality in the guise of national 
poverty ; — America was, by the force of circumstances, the 
rendezvous of all to whom nationality had been the source of 
all their sufferings. 

Nations, we have seen, are unions based upon community 
of speech ; this the Americans renounced, in favor of a union 
based upon a unity of thought ; and thus fell nationality, and 
arose the republic. The native Americans partly have been 
forced to doff the European part of their title ; and they have 
done wisely. It is the duty of the American party to combat 
all European traditions which are incompatible with Amer- 
icanism ; but, above all, that of nationality. To vindicate 
individualism against nationality, is the office of America. 
This is, at the same time, the whole force and scope of the 
revolution ; thus, the revolution which arose in and with 
America, must for ever return to it ; and America, which 
began in revolution, must live in it, and end with it. Whfen 
the dominion of nationality is crushed, and the sovereignty 
of the individual is attained, everywhere and everyhow, the 
missions of the revolution and of America will both be 
accomplished. 

" It has been frequently remarked," (such are the ever-memorable 
■words of Alexander Hamilton on the opening page of the Federalist,) 
" that it seems to have been reserved to the people of tlus country to 
decide, by their conduct and example, the important question, whether 
societies of men are really capable, or not, of establishing good govern- 
ment on reflection and choice, or -whether they are for ever destined to 
depend, for their political constitutions, on accident and force." 



72 THE NEW ROME. 

Independence was the first answer given to this problem ; 
the establishment of the republic in place of the Kingdom. 
Union, was the sound ; whilst accident is multifarious, 
reflection is the principle of unity ; the state established 
upon reflection must needs be a unitary state. Thus 
was "E pluribus Unum " made the watchword of our 
course. 

The fact of the unity of the mind, and of the foundation 
of the republican state upon the mind, should have silenced 
ere this the thoughtless reiteration of many men, who, in other 
respects, have been found capable of reflection, of the common- 
place that one kind of government will not do for all men, 
because men are different in different countries. The " gov- 
ernment" which is capable of uniting all, is just that which 
alone insures free scope to all their differences. The Indian 
widows are burnt by the priests ; the Chinese girls have their 
feet pinched ; the Russian serfs are compelled to draw their 
lord's carriage, and the Russian officers to marry Bulgarian 
ladies. To give them American institutions would not com- 
pel the women to burn the priests, the girls to waltz, the 
lords to draw their serfs, or the officers to marry Yankee 
girls ; but simply to let the women and the priests both go 
unburnt, the girls dance or pinch their feet, and ladies and 
officers to marry or be given in marriage, or not, just as the 
natural peculiarities of climate and country would impel 
them. If, then, their national peculiarities are natural and 
necessary, they would be, not extinguished, but guaranteed 
by the introduction of American liberty. It is to be feared, 



POLITICS. 73 

however, that that species of guarantee would remove the 
agent which is, in point of fact, necessary to the preservation 
of their " natural" existence. The German, when he comes 
to America, forgets, of his own accord, to fear the " Polizei ;" 
the Irishman, without any coercion or compulsion, at once 
forgets his " natural" privilege of paying rack-rent. It is 
fairly to be inferred, therefore, that, if American institutions 
were brought home to them, those good old habits would not 
long remain; and the Chinese and Russians would perhaps 
submit with equal grace to the process of Yankeefication. 

The independence and the union of the state require its 
universality. The American sovereign feels his title to the 
full enjoyment of his independence in every corner of the 
globe, and to protection in that enjoyment. Those who have 
united among themselves on the ground of the discovery of 
common principles, and a common nature, feel the force of 
the argument to apply to all other men with whom they hold 
the same principles in common.* " The enlargement of the 
orbis of government," was declared by Hamilton, (Federalist, 
p. 52,) " an indispensable element of American welfare." 



* " The principles underlying the Constitution," says "Win. H. Seward, 
in his letter to James Maher, dated March 15, 1844, " are, that the whole 
earth is the heritage of man, and every accessible part of it free to his 
footsteps ; and that, wherever, iu the providence of God, he was born, or 
might be led, and into whatsoever rank or condition he might fall, there 
he of right was, and ought to be, a member of the civil state, and entitled 
to free and equal suffrage for those who should make, and for those who 
should execute, the laws ; and that the sum-age was a condition precedent 
of his obedience." 
4 



74 THE NEW ROME, 

" The immediate object of the Federal Constitution is, to se- 
cure the union of the thirteen primitive states, which we know 
to be practicable : and to add to them such other states as 
may arise in their own bosoms, or in their neighborhoods, 
which we cannot doubt to be equally practicable." (lb., p. 
85.) This is the doctrine of Filibustierism ; to which those 
of our moralists educated to European ways of thinking, op- 
pose the wrongfulness of conquest, and the unrighteousness 
of a propaganda by force and violence. But we do not conquer, 
we liberate ; we abolish force and violence, and do not intro- 
duce it. Our " form of government," miscalled from a fallacious 
use of European terms, is a system of non-government, of the 
absence of all dictation ; and the imposition of non-govern- 
ment is a contradiction in terms. We do not propose to 
force the Cubans to expel their Captain-General, but to pre- 
vent the Captain-General from forcing the Cubans to retain 
him. We will not compel the Japanese to trade with us, 
but the Japanese government to abstain from preventing the 
intercourse of the Japanese with us, if they think proper to 
open it. We go behind nationalities to find the people. This 
is the head and front of our offending ; this is what will give 
to the American Revolution the empire of the world. 

The infederation of states will proceed in a regular grada- 
tion, depending upon their more or less intimate connection 
with the existing republic. This series it will not be very 
difficult to trace. 



POLITICS. 75 



5. — The Anglo-Saxons. 



The " possessions" of England on this continent embrace 
the Canadas, some of the West India Islands, and British 
Guiana. They must be extricated from their state of colonial 
vassalage, to become integral parts of the continental federa- 
tion. Recent letters from Jamaica take ground in favor of 
the annexation of that island. The " ruin" under which it 
has labored since the act of emancipation, is the rum of the 
traders who lived upon its dependent condition ; it has been 
attended with the formation of what constitutes the base of 
all solid prosperity, an independent and enterprising yeo- 
manry. These love to affiliate with Yankee peddlers and 
mechanics ; they see in annexation a formal abnegation of 
their part of subjection ; it will not be long delayed. 

We have heretofore considered the annexation of Canada 
in every point of view except that arising from its connection 
with England. Would the resistance of England to the de- 
clared will of the States and of Canada combined, avail to 
thwart it 1 We think not. The Fishery question has clearly 
shown that England cannot afford to quarrel with us. Three 
months of non-importation from America would entirely 
overturn her industrial system ; three months of non-inter- 
course with England would simply direct the current of 
American enterprise into new channels. It is no idle boast 
to say that at this moment America is the dominant, England 
the subordinate power. 

There is, however, no probability of a conflict. The ex- 



76 THENEWROME. 

perience of the thirteen colonies, which became the main stay 
of the social prosperity of England after they were separated 
from her political dictation, has taught her a valuable lesson. 
The English have no idea of permanently retaining their 
colonies. They are continually acquiring new ones, " the 
Saxon thirst for boundless sway" drives them to the ends of 
the earth ; they make them seminaries of democracy by 
giving them the most liberal constitutions; but they res- 
olutely deny them a share in controlling the destinies of the 
mother-country ; no one speaks seriously of the admission of 
colonial members into parliament. The colonies will come 
to send their representatives to Washington, but not to 
Westminster. Yet, as no one pretends that the condition of 
a colony is one in which a growing community can for ever 
remain, the alternative is unavoidable, of incorporation with 
the parent state, or of separation on the footing of independ- 
ence. The British mind has made its choice already in 
this dilemma : Lord John Russell having declared two years 
ago, on the ministerial bench of parliament, that " whenever 
the colonies considered themselves ripe for independence, and 
desired to withdraw, they might depart in peace ; the mother- 
country would content itself with the honor of having contrib- 
uted to the spread of political liberty by the establishment 
and nurture of her colonies." 

The treaty for the acquisition of the Sandwich Islands is 
concluded, and only awaits its ratification. These islands are 
the first stopping-place between this continent and Asia; 
they can hardly be called, geographically speaking, an Ameri- 



POLITICS. 77 

can outpost. The expedition to Japan and China has already 
started on its mission of making a breach for the entrance of 
American enterprise into these walled-up magazines of wealth 
and civilization. But the spangled banner will probably find 
its first resting-place upon another country of those distant 
regions. 

The largest island of the world, Australia, is thus described 
by one of its most patriotic inhabitants, — Dr. Lang, member 
of the legislative council of New South Wales : — 

" For eight months of the year, from March to November, the climate 
of New South Wales is delightful. The sky is seldom clouded, and for 
weeks together the sun looks down in unveiled beauty. Refreshing 
showers in ordinary seasons are not unfrequent, and it sometimes rains as 
heavily as within the tropics. It seldom freezes in Sydney, and never 
snows ; but fires are requisite during the day in the winter months, and 
for a considerable time longer in the mornings and evenings. During 
summer the heat is rarely oppressive, the thermometer seldom rising 
higher than 35 deg. 

" The soil is very prolific ; and the climate, in spite of occasional heavy 
droughts, admirable. Lumber is found in great variety and perfection ; 
the fisheries afford still greater advantages. Agriculture, however, is more 
profitable than either ; specimens of sweet potatoes are mentioned weigh- 
ing 30 pounds ; in the province of Victoria the average yield of wheat to 
the acre is 30 bushels, though Dr. Lang mentions an instance in which 65 
have been raised. And yet all these sources of wealth are inferior in im- 
portance to the grazing interest. 

" Emigration to this country was always considerable ; in 1851 it was 
estimated at 36,000 ; at that time, after a lapse of only 64 years from the 
date of its first settlement, the white population had increased to more than 
330,000, irrespective of Van Diemen's Land. The total amount of ex- 
ports from the provinces of New South Wales, Victoria, and South Aus- 
tralia was $3,370,000, the principal items being wool and tallow ; and the 
outgoing tunnage was 380,797. The principal part of the land was in the 
possession of " squatters," as they are termed, or proprietors of those im- 



78 THE NEW ROME. 

mense herds of sheep and cattle, whose produce has till lately formed the 
staple export of Australia generally. The vast tract of land over which 
these flocks and herds roam — stretching in a straight line about 1100 
miles across the country — is not the actual property of the squatters, but 
is merely hired of the government from year to year, each applicant re- 
ceiving a license for a " run," as it is termed in the local designation, in- 
curring the risk of being removed should any bona fide purchaser present 
himself. In consequence of the very favorable terms on which the pro- 
prietors of stock are enabled to hire these runs, paying merely a nominal 
price for the privilege, and the encouragement generally held out to them 
by the government, the squatting interest is the most wealthy and influ- 
ential in the colony, forming, indeed, quite a lauded aristocracy."* 

A laboring proletariat is the element of rebellion ; but a 
landed aristocracy is the seed of revolutions. 

The inhabitants, up to the previous year, labored under 
two standing grievances : the importation of government 
convicts, and the government monopoly of land. " Without 
entering into a review of the various changes of policy that 
have been adopted as to the alienation of the crown lands — 
from the free gifts of hundreds of thousands of acres to official 
favorites to their sale at five shillings sterling an acre — it will 
be sufficient for the present purpose to state, that, according to 
the last regulation of the Imperial Parliament on the subject, 
the price of land was fixed at a minimum of £1 per acre, to 
be sold in lots of not less than 640 acres, or a square mile. 
The tracts are put up for sale by public auction, which may 
be called at any time when a purchase is wished to be effected, 
and knocked down to the highest bidder, though no offers are 



* New York Tribune, October 12, 1852. 



POLITICS. 79 

accepted below the £1 per acre. These are for country lots, 
the suburban lots being put up at £2 10 ; but in the older 
cities, such as Sydney and Melbourne, a lot will bring at least 
as much as in the most valuable part of the city of New 
York."* This system, which prevented the " landed aristo- 
crats" from buying, and discouraged laborers from settling, 
naturally united the two interests in opposition to the " mother- 
country." Independence was already the subject of agitation ; 
a confederacy of five states was to uphold Saxon independence 
in the South Seas. 

The discovery of gold mines, richer than those of Califor- 
nia, diverted public attention from this and every other sub- 
ject. Like California, the island became a goal of emigration 
from all the corners of the earth. An armament weekly sets 
sail from English ports for Australia ; the average emigration 
of every day is set down at 1000 souls — making 300,000 
a year ! China has sent immense numbers, many of whom 
take the places of the herdsmen who have gone to the dig- 
gings. Even Californians have emigrated in masses, attracted 
by the report of the superior productiveness of the new-found 
mines. By the close of September, 1852, New York had sent 
a fleet of twenty sail, crowded with passengers, a number 
small in comparison to those who were preparing to follow. 
Where is all this to end 1 Every returning ship brings ti- 
dings of newly discovered layers of ore, and the cargoes are 
a voucher for the truth of the reports. The fable of Mount 

* New York Tribune, October 12, 1852. 



80 THE NEW ROME. 

Alexander, the veritable golden mountain, refuses for once to 
dissolve into mist. In a short time the population of Austra 
lia will have tripled in numbers. 

It is not easy to see how the change thus effected can 
operate otherwise than as an additional incentive to independ- 
ence. Causes of collision between the " authorities" and 
the adventurers will not be wanting in a state of transition 
and consequent partial confusion like the present. It is 
possible that England will be sufficiently blinded by the 
glitter of Australian gold, to deviate in this instance from the 
colonial policy maintained since 1783 ; but if so, the interven- 
ing stretch of ocean will offer a great impediment to her 
coercive operation. True, the Indian regiments are nearer 
at hand ; but when were the Indian regiments at leisure for a 
sea voyage ? If the Australians should be hard pushed, the 
emigrants from California — who are certainly determined not 
to submit to British dictation while they can exercise an in- 
fluence in the States — would suffer with them, and the Ameri- 
can people first, and the American government after them, 
would come to their aid. A little stretch of the Monroe doc- 
trine alone would require such a cause. The west coast of 
America, from similarity of natural and social position, w r ould 
probably take the lead in this movement. The independence 
of Australia thus achieved, and with American assistance, 
annexation will follow as a natural consequence. Meagher, 
the Irish exile, tells of a banner of stars even now concealed 
at various places on the island ; if these are not yet the stars 
of the right stripe, it will be very easy to make them so. 



POLITICS. 81 

With all the continent and Australia in the American 
scale, the rest of the world will be lifted in air, never to sink 
again. The annexation of the remaining countries will be a 
question of time, regulated by American convenience. 

England. 
We are just overtaking now the mightiest power on the 
globe. 

The population of Great Britain was, in 1841 27,019,555 

" " in 1851 27,452,262 

Giving an increase for ten years, of 432,707 

But this result is fallacious, for the 'population of Great 
Britain has passed its acme, and is now steadily diminishing. 

The natural increase of the country has long been counter- 
poised by the emigration. England and Ireland in this 
respect held opposite proportions. In Ireland, the emigration 
amounted to three times the increase ; in England, the increase 
to three times the emigration. " A gain of some 200,000 or 
225,000 a-year," says the London Times of November 4, 
1852, " represented the greatest ordinary amount of gain in 
this particular ;" for the United Kingdoms it may be set 
down at 360,000 to 390,000. Lord Derby gives the follow- 
ing figures of emigration. 

1850 220,000 

1851 273,000 

1852 •. 305,000 

But other authorities give the emigration of 1851 at 335,966, 
4* 



82 THE NEW ROME. 

which falls short of the increase given above by 25,000 to 
55,000.* 

These proportions have now altered : " there were at least 
60,000 fewer people in the British isles on the 29th of Sep- 
tember, 1852, than there had been on the 24th of June. In 



* The emigration of the United Kingdom from the year 1825 is the 
following : — 

1825 14,891 

1826 20,900 

1827 28,003 

1828 26,092 

1829 31,198 

1830 56,907 

1831 83,160 

1832 103,140 

1833 62,527 

1834 76,222 

1835 44,478 

1836 75,417 

1837 72,034 

1838 33,222 

1839 62,207 

1840 90,743 

1841 1 18,572 

1842 128,344 

1843 57,212 

1844 70,686 

1845 93 )50 1 

1846 129,851 

1847 258,270 

1848 248,289 

1849 299,498 

1850 280,849 

1851 335,966 



POLITICS. 83 

that quarter the births were 151,193, and the deaths 100,497, 
leaving a balance in favor of the population of 50,696. But 
in the same period there sailed from those shores, at those 
ports where government emigration offices are established, no 
fewer than 109,236 persons, so that the gain above specified 
becomes at once a loss of 58,540. Making allowance for 
those departures which escaped registration, we may very 
safely set the total loss produced by emigration at not less 
than 60,000 persons — a fact which implies not only that our 
population," we quote the Times as above, " is decreasing, 
but that it is decreasing more rapidly than it ever yet 
increased. A total of some 200,000 or 225,000 a-year 
represented the greatest ordinary amount of gain in this par- 
ticular, but the loss on the other side is now upward of 
100,000 in a single quarter, and that quarter, we may be 
pretty sure, will be left considerably behind by the quarter 
next to come." 

To make these statements tally with the above estimates 
of Lord Derby, it is necessary to assume that the figures he 
gives date only to the beginning of the quarter under con- 
sideration by the Times, so that the total emigration to the 
close of the year 1852 may be set down at 500,000, leaving 
a decrease of 150,000 to 200,000. " We shall probably be 
within the mark," continues the English organ, " in saying 
that our population will, for a certain period, diminish in the 
same ratio as it has heretofore increased, and that, instead of 
200,000 a year being added, the same amount will be 
subtracted.'''' 



84 THE KEW ROME. 

" The great question is, bow long this drain will be continued ? "We 
can only say that there appears, as yet, no sign whatever of cessation or 
abatement. There is no doubt but that more people left the country in 
October than left it in September, and as little that more are departing in 
this present month than departed in October. Only the other day we 
published a notification that the Government Emigration Commissioners, 
having fixed on Southampton as a depot, had stipulated for the construc- 
tion of a species of barracoon at each terminus of the Southwestern 
Railway, capable of containing 2,000 emigrants, who were to be cleared 
off with extraordinary facility and quickness, and replaced by fresh claim- 
ants for a passage. The opening of the new year, according to the an- 
nouncement, was expected to communicate a strong additional impulse to 
the traffic, and, as Australia will at least take all we can send, it is hard 
to fix any limit to the displacement. The effects indeed are already felt in 
almost every branch of every-day business, and the experience of another 
year under these strange conditions will go far to teach us how soon what 
is now relief may assume the character of exhaustion. As many men are 
not employed in the army, navy, and militia, all taken together, as are 
now leaving England every six months." 

From all these facts it is safe to infer that the 
population of England at this moment has 
sunk to , 27,000,000 

Turning now to the statistics of the United 
States, we find the inhabitants for the year 
1840 numbering 17,063,353 

For the year 1850 23,144,126 

This number has certainly risen, by natural in- 
crease and immigration, to 25,000,000 

And it may fairly be presumed that, at the end 

of another year, either country will contain. . 26,000,000 

The commercial marine of America is already 
equal to that of England. The tonnage of the 
former is given for June 30, 1850, at 3,681,469 

While that of the latter is 3,130,000 

The ton of the United States is smaller that that of Eng- 
land, which will perhaps cancel the difference in numbers ; but 



POLITICS. 85 

the increase since the taking of the census has certainly been 
more rapid in America than in Britain. English sailors are 
leaving the service of their ships in such numbers, for the 
better pay and perhaps treatment of American captains, that 
the English, by their own account, find a difficulty in manning 
their line-of-battle ships on short notice. The rats desert the 
sinking vessel. The English navy is, indeed, far in advance 
of the American ; yet the latter is sufficient for all present 
exigencies, and in case of an increased demand, the supply 
will not be wanting. The docks can quickly launch as many 
ships as will be needed, when the needful in funds and in 
materials are so easily obtained. The Americans, proceed- 
ing upon the true principle, that a heavy load of armor in 
time of peace absorbs the powers which should be reserved 
for the battle, prefer to keep their capital at work in the com- 
mercial marine, which will easily furnish materials for war- 
fare when required. 

In agriculture and manufactures, we find the same pro- 
portions as in population and commerce ; the United States 
excel England in the former, and fall but little short of it in 
the latter. Although an equal amount of produce is not 
obtained from the same extent of surface, yet the entire area 
is so much greater that the gross amount of production 
must needs be superior also. The number of horses alive in 
the United States is five millions; more than three times 
that of England ; highly important for so fast a people ! 

American manufactures are hastening with astonishing 
rapidity to take their stand by the side of those of England. 



86 T II E N E W R O M E . 

Cotton factories are daily going up, and in India and China 
the fabrics of America are already supplanting the English. 
Wool has become an article of importation for American 
manufactures, the demand being ahead of the production ; 
and it is well ascertained that the proportion of the cotton 
crop manufactured in the country is increasing year by year. 
The period, then, is not far distant, when raw cotton will no 
longer be exported. The trade in coal, that vital staff 
of modern industry, is becoming as colossal in its proportions 
as that of England, and must soon surpass it as far as the 
coal basins of Pennsylvania would overlie those of New- 
castle. The iron business of this country was stagnant for 
some time, but is recovering under the present favorable 
state of trade. We were, until lately, but indifferently 
supplied with two of the main elements of industry, capital 
and labor ; while we always possessed its fundamental essen- 
tials, the soil with its ungathered treasures, and the largest 
political liberty. Capital now comes in the train of the 
immigrant laborers ; it is also imported independently, under 
the pressure of events such as the threatened inroad of 
Louis Napoleon and the promising nature of American in- 
vestments. The drain of laborers from England has emptied 
her poor-houses, and enhanced the rate of wages to such 
a degree, that her manufacturing supremacy is seriously 
jeoparded, and our fabrics enabled to divide the market with 
her; the price given has doubled within a year. The in- 
flux of California gold, which also enters into the calcula- 
tion, will be more extensively considered hereafter. All 



POLITICS. 87 

these influences combine to bring about the supremacy of 
America at no distant day. 

"Many large manufacturing establishments," observes the article of 
the Times, already quoted, " are now, in fact, like regiments after a battle, 
with young hands unexpectedly promoted to the duties of seniors, and 
vacancies in abundance still." 

The geographical extension of a state is always one of the 
chief factors of its greatness. The Eastonian, (Pennsylvania,) 
of Nov. 25, 1850, says :— 

" English statesmen have all attributed the relative decline of Holland 
to its limited extent of territory. Holland contains but 1 1 ,000 square 
miles, — but little more than New Jersey. The population is about two 
and a half millions. England has robbed her of all her fairest possessions. 
Great Britain, because of her extent of territory, has absorbed the strength 
of Holland, Venice, and Portugal, and hence their decline. The territory 
of the British Islands is not less than 120,000 square miles. But does not 
Great Britain sustain the same relation to the United States that Holland 
does to Great Britain? Whilst the territory of Holland is but 11,000 
square miles, and that of the British Islands 120,000, or near eleven times 
greater, the territory of the United States is over 36,000,000 of square 
miles, or more than three hundred times larger than the British Islands. 
"Will not, in the future, England decline as the United States gain strength ? 
"Will not this great territory, when its population has grown more dense, 
absorb the power and wealth of Great Britain, as she has absorbed the 
power and wealth of Holland, of Venice, and of Portugal ?" 

The stupendous greatness of England is factitious, and will 
only become natural when that empire shall have found its 
real centre. That centre is in the United States. The An- 
glican empire is essentially oceanic. Its dominions extend 
along the coasts of the Atlantic and the Pacific, the lesser 
and the greater ocean. America, lying in the midst of the 



88 THE NEW ROME. 

ocean, is therefore its natural point of gravitation. The 
realization of an idea higher than could be developed in the 
mother island, that of the republican democracy, required a 
temporary segregation of the centre ; that task accomplished, 
it is time to call for a re-union ; but the former adjunct being 
now no longer merely the geographical centre, but the polit- 
ical and social focus, must take the lead. England, with her 
colonies, must be annexed to the American Union. 

The finances of the mother-country are suffering severely 
from the competition of the United States. Taxation is 
driving the capitalist as well as the laborer across the seas, 
where greater gains are open to him at a far lighter cost. 
The Manchester school are clamorous for retrenchment by 
the reduction of the army and navy ; but in the present 
isolated state of the country, this is an impossibility ; an 
increase of both these arms of the national defence is, on 
the contrary, unavoidable. France has now received the 
constitution of a band of robbers under a brigand leader, 
who is prepared at any moment to enter upon a foray. The 
equipment of the militia was not to be delayed, " because," 
says an English paper, " every family in England has more 
or less plate, which would prove a great temptation to the 
French soldiery !" But the Manchester men are not the 
only advocates of retrenchment ; even the Tor? s, having 
given up all hope of re-enacting the corn-laws, now see no 
other hope for the agricultural interest, but in a rigid govern- 
ment economy. But no means of saving worth the name are 
to be devised, except the single one of annexation. The army 



POLITICS. 89 

and navy would then be transferred to the central govern- 
ment, to be renovated, of course, by the democratic spirit 
of its institutions. The national debt would remain where 
it is ; but the cancellation of her army and navy, and nine- 
tenths of her civil list, w r ould afford England the only 
conceivable possibility of removing that burthen. No other 
adequate means of extrication from the meshes of English 
politics ever has been proposed, and none ever will be. 

The proposal will at first have a strange sound in English 
ears; but the necessity of the case will get the better of 
many a superstition, many a prejudice, and many a selfish 
interest. Like every measure which is destined to further 
the welfare of the whole community, it has many uncon- 
scious friends and few implacable enemies. Of the latter 
description there is perhaps but one : the established church, 
with its dependencies ; that body will indeed have reason to 
oppose the measure, for its triumph will involve the annihila- 
tion of that establishment as a branch of the government. 
The Queen has but one political duty, — to yield to the force 
of circumstances. The landed aristocracy are convinced that 
a radical change of some kind is indispensable to their salva- 
tion ; one faction of them will seek it in a reaction against 
the progressive measures carried by the haute bourgeoisie ; 
but a more influential, if not a larger portion, will prefer an 
affiliation with the people, in w T hich they will act as leaders, 
to a connection with the merchants and manufacturers, in 
which they can only hold a place as servants, and will seek 
revenge for the bourgeois reforms which prejudiced them, 



90 THE NEW ROME. 

by aiding popular reforms, to the prejudice of the bour- 
geoisie. This is the policy of the Young England party, of 
which D'Israeli is a very inadequate exponent ; if reliable 
accounts are to be believed, there are many democratic aspi- 
rations among the young English nobility, and many among 
them would gladly exchange the inactivities of a rotten 
borough canvass for the stirring struggle after an American 
Senatorship. The Manchester school are in favor of annexa- 
tion, for annexation is the inevitable sequence to free-trade. 
The small tradesmen and farmers will, as usual, await the 
issue. None remain, but the party of the masses, the former 
Chartists. Now what is the charter but a timid excerpt from 
the American constitution 1 They to whom " the glory of 
England" was a centennial degradation, will not shed many 
tears over the absorption of her greatness. They to whom 
the part of their country's history is an unbroken remem- 
brance of past horrors, will not turn their backs upon the 
future because it comes in unushered. They have been 
mangled long enough by the British lion, to clasp with eager- 
ness the pinions of the American eagle, when he brings them 
tidings of liberation. 

No one can fail to perceive the revival of affection which 
is now going on between the kindred nations. The enhance- 
ment of commercial and social intercourse promotes mutual 
acquaintance, regard, and esteem. The number of Americans 
who have gone during this year to travel in Europe, and par- 
ticularly England, is estimated at 10,000. Those who have 
seen England in youth, and experienced the transport which 



POLITICS. 91 

overcome an American mind on beholding in the very sub- 
stance the images conjured up by the vivid portraitures, the 
bright descriptions, and the teeming contemplations of the 
poets and novelists by whom our intellectual infancy is ma- 
tured, will agree with our countryman, who said, at an 
English dinner, "The Englishman pays America a visit, but 
the American makes a pilgrimage to England. Our earliest 
impressions, all our mental growth, rest upon your country, 
which is our country also, upon your great men, your 
Shakspeares and your Miltons, who are also our great men 
and teachers." 

The following passage from a recent work, entitled " Two 
Years on the Farm of Uncle Sam, with Sketches of his Lo- 
cation, Nephews, and Prospects, by Charles Casey," will 
show the response of the English heart to sentiments like 
that last quoted : — 

" Vieing with the Parisian in dress — with the Englishman in energy — 
cautious as a Dutchman — impulsive as an Irishman — patriotic as Tell — 
brave as Wallace — cool as Wellington — and royal as Alexander, — there 
he goes, the American citizen ! In answering your questions, or speakinc 
commonly, his style is that of the ancient Spartan ; but put him on a 
stump, with an audience of Whigs, Democrats, Barnburners, and he be- 
comes a compound of Tom Cribb and Demosthenes, a fountain of 
eloquence, passion, sentiment, sarcasm, logic, and drollery, altogether dif- 
ferent from any thing known or imagined in the Old World states. Say 
any thing of any body, (as public men,) untied with conventional phrase- 
ology, he swings his rhetorical mace with a vigorous arm, crushing the 
antagonistic principle or person into a most villainous compound. See 
him at dinner, he dispatches his meal with a speed which leads you to 
suppose him a ruminating animal, yet enjoying his cigarro for an hour 
afterwards with the gusto and ennui of a Spaniard. Walking right on, as 
if it were life against time, with the glass at fever heat, yet taking it cool- 



92 



THE NEW ROME, 



ly in the most serious and pressing matter — a compound of the Red Man, 
Brummel, and Franklin. Statesman and laborer, on he goes — divided 
and subdivided in politics and religion — professionally opposed with a 
keenness of competition in vain looked for even in England, yet, let but 
the national rights of liberty be threatened, and that vast nation stands 
a pyramid of resolve, united as one man, with heart, head, hand, and purse, 
burning with a Roman zeal to defend inviolate the cause of the common- 
wealth. To him who has lived among the Americans, and looked largely 
at the theory and practice of their government and its executive, there 
remains no doubt that the greatest amount of personal security and free- 
dom has been produced from the least amount of cost, of any nation in the 
world. Culling its principles and wisdom from the history of all empires, 
it stands the nearest of all earthly systems to perfection." 

An enthusiastic eulogy, and a true one. An English 
author and poet, of much note, has spoken of America and 
her destiny in the following words : — 

Thou noblest scion of an ancient root, 

Born of the forest-king ! spread forth, spread forth, — 
High to the stars thy tender leaflets shoot, 

Deep dig thy fibres round the ribs of earth ! 
From sea to sea, from south to icy north, 

It must ere long be thine, through good or ill, 
To stretch thy sinewy boughs : Go, — Wondrous child ! 

The glories of thy destiny fulfil ; — 
Remember then thy mother in her age, 

Shelter her in the tempests, warring wild, 
Stand thou with us when all the nations rage 

So furious together ! — we are one : 
And through all time, the calm historic page 

Shall tell of Britain blest in thee her son. 

Africa and India. 
England is busily extending our empire. The Kaffir war 
will probably end in an immense accession of territory. A 
Yankee speculator recently presented himself at the office of 



POLITICS. 93 

the Colonial Secretary, with an offer to contract with the 
government for the entire extermination of the Kaffirs, by 
the agency of a troop of Kentucky riflemen, who, he said 
were waiting below. He desired that somebody might be 
sent to see them shoot, and make report of their rifle. Some- 
body was sent, and they shot admirably ; but the Colonial 
Secretary declined acceding to the proposal. " because," con- 
jectures a paper which is presumed to speak by authority, 
" we should soon get rid of the Kaffirs, but what could we do 
with the Yankees ?" 

In passing under American jurisdiction, the South African 
countries will receive a treatment similar to our present new 
territories, with which they have much in common. The 
case of India is different. " A correspondent of the London 
Daily Netvs" says the New York Tribune of November 3, 
1852, " in calling public attention to the waste of money in 
pushing English influence in India, and the absurdity of many 
of the costly measures taken to secure the trade with the 
nations bordering upon the British Indian possessions, refers 
with no great complacency to the rising trade between the 
United States and the ports of the Beloochistan and the neigh- 
boring waters." He is speaking of the port of Kurrachee, 
situated at the most westerly of the mouths of the Indus, and 
of the necessity of some improvement of the harbor, and 
some better means of direct communication with the Indus, 
which is all that is required to make this port the centre of 
trade for all that section of Southern Asia. We quote a few 
passages : 



94 THE NEW ROME. 

" A tramroad is required from Kurrachee to Tatta on the Indus, where, 

the report says, ' the country is level, and rain almost unknown, and where 

the rails might be laid for miles almost on the ordiuary surface of the 

ground.' But neither is the work made over to a company, nor sanctioned 

by the government. 

****** 

" The shores of Persia are within a run of thirty-six hours. The ripe 
fruit of Muscat, with its dried raisins and figs, finds a market in the can- 
tonment. And now we learn that the real trade in wool is being opened 
by the adventurous Americans ! 

" America's incipient trade with the opposite coast, Muscat, on which 
they hold no harbor, and where they have fought no battles, nor acquired 
large kingdoms, is already becoming more valuable than our own, and will 
grow into an extensive commerce. Any mail may tell us that an Amer- 
ican consul is appointed to the gulf. 

" Time, indeed, it was, that the court should awaken from its night- 
mare. ' An American shipmaster will land a cargo on the Mekran coast 
at a less expense than a cargo of British goods can be landed in Bombay ;' 
and the only way to defy such dangerous competition is to make the most 
of the great advantages afforded by the Indus as the highway to Central 
Asia. 

" It is America, not Russia, we fear. All the world over, taxes are 
being reduced ; but in India we, three or four years ago, imposed ' an ad- 
ditional ad valorem duty of five per cent, on importations of English 
goods,' because our customs were falling. America is seeking for the 
commerce of China by California, and for that of the Indies by the oppo- 
site coast ; and, in the race of competition before us, it is a problem 
whether our rival, trading with independent countries, and with races of 
men that are comparatively wealthy because they are free, will not beat 
us from the markets, confining us to the internal trade of impoverished 
India." 

This extract goes to show that preparations for the annex- 
ation of India are going on, independently of the coming 
infederation of England. It is also important as throwing 
some little light on the commercial condition of India, a sub- 
ject on which, whether from accident or design, it is exceed- 



POLITICS. 95 

ingly difficult for an American to obtain any information. 
The term " impoverished," taken in connection with the 
trifling wages at which Indian labor may be obtained in Aus- 
tralia, points out the probability of a large emigration from 
that peninsula to the South Sea, and perhaps to California, 
to be followed by an increase of commercial intercourse with 
the countries colonized, which will enable America to carry 
out what Alexander failed in attempting — the introduction of 
European civilization into the cradle of the world. An 
American author goes on saying : " For whose benefit is 
England conquering India, the w r orld shall see after we have 
taken foothold in California." It is remarkable that consuls 
are here mentioned as the agents for affecting the conquests 
of the New Rome ; the functions of those officers are as much 
at variance with those of their prototypes, as the genius of 
our empire differs from the one it is destined to eclipse. 

6. — The Teutonic Race. 

The Anglo-Saxon empire, having received its legitimate 
organization, will be first brought into connection with that 
portion of the continent of Europe inhabited by tribes akin 
to itself. 

Germany. 

This is the hearthstone of Europe, physically and morally ; 

all the burdens of Europe are poured into its lap, and it is 

constantly atoning by its sufferings for the sins of all the 

nations. Is there reason to expect another convulsive 



96 THE NEW ROME. 

struggle in this country 1 The answer is an absolute negative, 
based upon the extensive opportunities of one of the authors 
for observation afforded by a position in the German Republi- 
can party for the last five years, by ramified connections with 
the democracy in quite a number of the German states, by 
the adventures had in the character of a political fugitive, and 
by a careful and unbiassed study of the reports brought over 
within the last twelvemonth. Political revolutions, in the 
restricted European sense of the term, are the offspring of 
social revulsions, by which members of a ruling or independ- 
ent class have suddenly sunk to the level of a servient one. 
These individuals are brought to reflect upon the rationale of 
their new position, and then stir up in their new-found asso- 
ciates that discontent which would otherwise not be felt by 
men educated to degradation. These " demagogues" are the 
men who, in the hackneyed phrase of empty-headed conserv- 
atism, " have nothing to lose, and every thing to gain." In 
point of fact, they, or their immediate ancestors, have lost 
every thing, and on that account are dissatisfied with gaining 
nothing. There is at present no such state of things in 
Germany. The " demagogues" of the last four years are 
in exile ; the energetic portion of their adherents have fol- 
lowed them, going to the republic when the republic would 
not come to them. Those who remain behind have lapsed 
into their former state of contented servitude. The country 
is again comparatively prosperous — that is to say, wealth is 
accumulating in the hands in which it is found, while it 
remains unknown to those who had it not before : and thus 



POLITICS. 97 

it will continue, until another commercial and social trans- 
position shall call for a re-adjustment of political forms. 

Such a change will result from the only national move- 
ment now on foot in Germany, the emigration to America. 
250,000 souls will date their exodus from that country from 
the present year : surely such a safety-valve should prevent 
almost any explosion ! The following are the statistics of 
arrivals at the port of New York alone for the last four 
years : — 

1S49. 1S50. 1851. 1352. 

Germany 55,705 45,402 69,883 129,652 

Ireland 112,251 116,532 163,256 124,159 

Other countries... 56,647 50,862 56,462 56,577 

Total 220,603 212,796 289,601 310,398 

The German emigration of to-day is fifty times greater 
than that of thirty years ago, as is proved by the following 
figures : — 

1 822 2,200 

1826... 10,000 

1830 15,000 

1832 24,000 

1834 22,000 

1837 33,000 

1843 23,000 

1844 43,701 

1845 67,209 

1846 106,000 

1847 110,000 

1848 95,000 

1851 113,199 

The amount of property introduced by these emigrants is 
5 



\)b THE NEW ROME. 

estimated by M. Gaebler, Chairman of the Berlin Central 
Committee of Emigration, at one hundred and sixteen millions 
of thalers, ($81,200,000,) for the six years from 184G to 1851, 
making an annual average of nearly twenty millions of 
thalers, or fifteen millions of dollars. The report complains 
that " moreover these emigrants comprise the most energetic 
and enterprising portion of the population, thus drawing off 
the labor of Germany to increase the competition of American 
industry. Instead, therefore, of increasing, as was expected, 
the number of consumers of German exports, it is found to 
depress our American market, by creating an inland compe- 
tition in that country with the manufactures of this." 

Assuming the proportion between the German arrivals at 
New York, and those at all points of the Union, to coincide 
with the standard of 1851, (1 to 1-|,) we obtain the fol- 
lowing : — 

Arrivals at Arrivals throughout 
New York. the Union. 

1849 55,705 84,270 

1850 45,402 73,778 

1851 69,883 113.199 

1852 129,662 210,700 

There is every reason to expect a continued increase in the 
same proportion; the forty millions of Germany furnishing 
an emigration stock which will meet every demand. We 
may therefore prepare for the reception of 400,000 German 
emigrants in 1853. The Union now has four or five millions 
of inhabitants of German birth ; a number of course destined 
soon to be vastly increased. The republican sentiments of 



POLITICS. 99 

this class, and their accounts of the prosperity of this repub- 
lic upon the minds of their transatlantic brethren, is incalcu- 
lable. There is scarce a family in Germany unrepresented 
here, and without an American correspondent. Every such 
letter contains a praise of liberty and of the republic, which 
are thus brought home to the very heart's core of the people. 
There is no propaganda more effective than this : where no 
newspaper or pamphlet can ever penetrate into the far recesses 
of the Suabian Alps and of the Odenwald, these messengers 
of sedition carry their alluring tales of " high wages," " good 
earnings," " meat three times a day," &c, which, in the eyes 
of monarchical subjects, are weighty reasons in favor of the 
republic. 

I This propaganda is being systematized. On the 29th of 
January, 1852, a congress of Germans at Philadelphia formed 
the " American Revolutionary League for Europe," designed 
to assist in the veritable liberation of the European nations. 
At this congress the following resolution was presented : — 

" That in the opinion of the present congress, every people, upon throw- 
ing off the yoke of its tyrants, ought to demand admission into the league 
of states already free, that is, into the American Union ; so that these 
states may become the nucleus of the political organization of the human 
family, and the starting-point of the World's Republic." 

It received the enthusiastic support of a respectable minor- 
ity ; but the greater number, though professing entire confi- 
dence with its views, considered its adoption injudicious under 
existing circumstances. 

In preparing a report for the second congress of the League, 



100 THE NEW ROME. 

held at Wheeling, September 18, 1852, the sub-committee of 
the central board on congressional resolutions, submitted the 
same proposal, with an extended argument in its favor ; not 
so much with any hope of its adoption, but for the purpose 
of drawing attention to it. Contrary to all expectation it was 
unanimously adopted by the board and laid before the con- 
gress, where it met with the same good fortune ; it may now 
be regarded, in some sort, as the official expression of the 
political views of the German emigration. The League has 
adopted the title of the " People's League of the Old and 
New World," and inscribed universal annexation on its ban- 
ners. We mean to feed the flame of American liberty until 
it shall warm the plains and valleys of the distant fatherland. 
The German is universal in hi 
says, more truly than Addison 



The German is universal in his thoughts and feelings ; — he 



No pent-up Utica contracts our powers, 
But the whole boundless universe is ours. 

He has learned, in chemistry, that a fluid crystallizes far 
better when a formed crystal is introduced into it. The 
European revolution failed, in a great measure, from the phan- 
tom of socialism ; a successful revolution requires at once a 
guarantee to possessors against spoliations, and to the penni- 
less, of the solution of the social question. Both are united 
under the American constitution. Private property is no 
where so secure, acquisition no where so easy, organization 
and combination no where so unrestricted, discussion and agi- 
tation no where so absolutely free. Few indeed would hesi- 



POLITICS. 101 

tate to exchange the present German constitution for the 
American, if the choice were offered. The idea of annexation 
has already been discussed in the German papers, and was 
received with warm approbation. It has been a matter of 
judicial investigation in the criminal courts of that country, 
who acquitted the author of all seditious intentions, on the 
ground that, though his project involved the subversion of the 
German governments, it did not appear that such subversion 
was necessarily a forcible one. Time will show. 

We see all the difficulties of the undertaking ; we know 
that the liberties of Germany are to be arrayed, in the last 
resort, with the bayonets of Russia ; but we know, also, that 
liberty must be the ultimate issue, and that annexation is the 
way which leads to it. We are not in want of natural allies. 
The German press of this country now numbers 180 news- 
papers ; unequalled in any other language except the English. 
It is not yet on a level with the present state of the German 
mind ; but the reactive influence of that mind must soon be 
felt and seen. We have, besides, the millions of German 
emigrants here ; and the millions of those unhappy at home ; 
and, more than all, we have the mighty American republic, 
growing every day in the appreciation of her powers and 
her task. 

The smaller countries surrounding Germany have as 
many points of contact with America as the centre country, 
and will be easilv induced to take sides for annexation. 



102 THE NEW ROME. 

Switzerland. 

This venerable republic, now the oldest in the world, is 
at present beset with troubles ; factions from within, and 
threats from without, are beating upon the foundations of 
her polity. It is hard to live only by the mutual hatred of 
one's neighbors. National selfishness keeps Switzerland 
alive, but at the same time keeps her in perpetual fear of 
death. How would she hail the end of nationalism 1 She 
relies upon the United States for counsel and protection, and 
will not be disappointed. The treaty concluded between the 
two republics, and negotiated by Mr. Mann, is of great im- 
portance as the beginning of an active intervention policy. 
It is to be remarked, in passing, that the emigration from 
Switzerland, which is considerable, is confined to the German 
cantons ; just as that of France hardly extends beyond the 
German portions of Alsace. The Frenchman and the Italian 
are rooted to the environs of ancient Rome ; the German 
has no such attachments. 

Holland 
Has many reminiscences of America, dating from ancient 
times ; she is the foundress of the Empire State and City ; 
its descendants here, already numerous, are constantly in- 
creasing. "De Nieusbode" is the title of a Dutch news- 
paper recently started in Wisconsin. The former Queen of 
the Seas will gladly acknowledge a successor to whom she 
may claim so near a relationship. Her East Indian colonies, 
now dormant, will receive a new impulse from American life 



POLITICS. 103 

and trade, for which they are well prepared. We shall soon 
see American enterprise at work in those waters. 

Scandinavia. 
The north of Europe is also pouring into our lap its 
throngs of active, hard-working men. The Normans are 
known to have been the original discoverers of America. 
They came about the year 1000, by way of Iceland and 
Greenland to the north-east coast, to what they called Vin- 
land, the land of Vines, where traces of their presence are 
yet visible. They now appear determined to obtain a more 
lasting possession than they had at that time. The Danes 
and Swedes are outnumbered by Norwegians. Wisconsin, 
with its congenial climate and stormy seas, seems to be their 
favorite resort ; there is a large settlement of them at Green 
Bay. More recently, the settlement of Norwegian colonists 
on an extended scale has been undertaken by Ole Bull, the 
distinguished violinist. His settlement is in Potter County, 
Pennsylvania, whither he speaks of bringing hundreds of 
thousands of his countrymen. The republican sentiments 
expressed by Ole Bull, who has declared his intentions to 
become a citizen of this country, gives us reason to believe 
that the influence of these colonists upon their mother 
country will also tend in favor of annexation. 

7. — The Jews. 

They whose nationality was their religion, and whose 
religion was the worship of the Maker of " Heaven and 



104 THE NEW ROME. 

Earth and all that in them is," were from the first contemn- 
ers of that heathenism which ties the supersensuous soul of 
man to time, place, or sod. They from the first went 
forth to conquer and subdue sub-human nature, not to owe 
fealty to it. In obedience to this superior principle they 
have been exiles for two thousand years ; never for a 
moment doubting that it must come at last to overthrow 
the grosser influences that seemed for a time triumphant. 
During all the middle ages they were persecuted and de- 
spised for anticipating the characteristics of the nineteenth 
century. With the first effort of the Germanic idea to cast 
off the Roman formulas, they were found in the foremost 
rank of the combatants. Spinoza was the first who grasped 
and riddled the fundamental Catholic perversion, the duality 
between heaven and earth, thought and thing ; in the last 
struggle of German research it was Boerne and Heine who 
circulated as common coin the rich ore dug out by Germanic 
students. 

The day of their deliverance has come ; the Messiah they 
had a right to expect, if such was the name of their principle. 
All the world are now Jews ; every body makes money ; and 
Rothschild is the " sixth great power," at least co-ordinate 
with the other five. The Jews are no longer a peculiar 
people ; and will soon cease to be a distinct one ; not, how- 
ever, until they have reaped the rewards of their former 
toils. 

The idea for some time entertained of purchasing Judea, 
and making Rothschild a Jewish national king, was one of 



POLITICS. 105 

those fantastic confusions of form and substance which could 
obtain but a very slight hold upon so rational a people. 
They follow a truer instinct in settling in America to enjoy a 
genuine religious toleration, and an unfeigned equality. 
Liberty and commerce, the essence of their character, are 
also the essence of Americanism. It is confidently asserted 
that the Jews contrive to get themselves smuggled out of the 
Russian Empire, for the purpose of emigrating to the American 
world. 

But liberty and commerce, which are the characteristics 
of Judaism and of Americanism, are also those of annexation : 
every Jew will hasten to claim the protection of the American 
flag for his operations over the world, and Rothschild will 
not shut his eyes to the only prospect of enabling the 
European states to liquidate the debts they owe him. 

8. — The Sclavonic Race. 

That great uprising of all peoples, that world's war which 
is for ever seen to hang, like the sword of Damocles, over the 
passing joys and troubles of the hour, will fall when the 
Anglo-Saxon empire shall lay its slow but unyielding grasp 
upon the countries of the Germanic confederation. Then will 
the mastery of Europe be the prize of the death-struggle 
between the Union and the Czar. • That mighty power now 
governs the continent from the coasts of Siberia to the 
German Ocean, and from the English Channel to the Medi- 
terranean ; let the ruler style himself Frederick William or 
5* 



106 THE NEW ROME. 

Francis Joseph, or Louis Napoleon, or Pio-Nono, he looks up 
to Nicholas, the real fountain of his power. The hierarchical 
constitution of the Middle Ages, ecclesiastical and political, 
which, in the nature of things, was bound to turn either into 
monarchy or pantarchy, has found the former manifestation 
in the Russian empire, the latter upon this continent. To say 
that Russia is the only absolute monarchy in the world, 
would be to affirm an absurdity ; for while there are two men 
upon the earth, one cannot be absolutely monarch. But 
Russia is the only state in which the monarchy has no po- 
litical antagonist capable of making head against it. The 
nobility, with their thirteen classes, are divided, not numerous, 
heavily indebted to the crown, and detested by the masses ; 
they serve the Emperor as a sconce for the light of his great- 
ness, without emitting any lustre of their own. The army, 
the only power capable of becoming formidable, is amused 
by foreign wars, and without leaders except their officers, who 
are scions of the detested nobility, or foreign hirelings of the 
emperor. The bureaucracy are so corrupt as to be incapable 
of any combination out of their usual routine of espionage, 
chicane, and trickery. The mercantile classes are made up, 
in a very large proportion, of serfs, who are permitted to 
pursue industrial callings by the favor of their lords, which 
must be paid for by an enormous black -mail, and the protec- 
tion of the Czar. They are envied by their fellow-serfs, dis- 
liked by the lords who fleece them, distrusted by the officials, 
and without any hope of safety but from the monarch. 
Lastly, the serfs, divided into villages, between which stand- 



POLITICS. 107 

ing feuds are industriously fomented, are at war with every 
body except the emperor, with whom they come into no 
collision, and whom they consequently endow with all the 
perfections which they find wanting in the surrounding 
realities. Thus, of all these millions, the Czar is the only 
bond of union ; and this bond has all the strength of religion, 
because, as the Russian Church has been absorbed into the 
monarchy, so the creed of the people is merged almost to 
absorption in the loyalty of the subject. While the Western 
Church has first overpowered, and then separated from the 
State, the Eastern has become engulphed in it to the virtual 
destruction of its identity ; the " Russian God" means either 
a painted idol or the Russian Czar. This is the secret of 
Russian absolutism. 

It were an idle effort to belittle the powers of such an 
organization, opposed to the distracted condition of the Occi- 
dental states of Europe, with their collapsed aristocracy, 
their hollow absolutism, and smothered democracy. Napo- 
leon's vision failed when he said that in fifty years Europe 
must be either republican or Cossack : he should have said 
that it would be first Cossack, and then Yankee. Russia 
must either deal or drink destruction : she is ever intent 
upon the former. European aristocracy cannot withstand 
her, for it is already absorbed, one half in monarchical, the 
other in democratic interests. European democracy cannot 
withstand her, for it is disorganized, unsteady, theoretical, 
and unstatesmanlike. It contemplates ideals without bridging 
the gulph between them and reality, and still cleaves to the 



1 08 THE K E W ROME. 

very traditions which have created and are preserving the 
greatness of its enemies ; it wars upon property, commerce, 
and family, when it has no institution at hand capable of sup- 
planting them ; and overlooks the scaly monster Nationality, 
and the United States, the certain antidote.^ Hence they are 
ideologists, not statesmen ; they offer an abundance of criti- 
cism, but lack counsel ; they have many theories, but not a 
single project. They confess a prevailing sentiment, that the 
Holy Alliance of privilege and of despotism is only to be 
combated with the alliance of equality and liberty ; and the 
United States of Europe have been urged as an idea built 
upon this sentiment. But it has not emerged from the sphere 
of ideas ; there is nowhere a party or section of a party which 
pursues that object as its leading design. The solidarity of 
the peoples has never been preached, except in the peculiar 
interest of some particular people. Hence it has never 
occurred to any of its advocates that such a solidarity to 
acquire 

" A local habitation and a name," 

must have a point of exit and of retreat, a stronghold, where 
the supremacy of its principle is absolutely safe from at least 
immediate assault, and which may do it the same service as 
rendered by Eussia to the Holy Alliance. Nor have they 
ever reflected that this hegemony cannot be devolved on a 
member of the old fraternity without degenerating into a 
supremacy, but must be accorded to a power common to all 
the contending states in the origin of its ingredients, and 



POLITICS. 109 

distinct from them all in its formation. There will, therefore, 
be no concerted rising to repel the concert of repression ; 
isolated districts may rebel, not in hope, but in despair ; their 
certain defeat serving only to hasten and perfect the utter 
subjugation of the whole. The reign of Russian absolutism 
is an inevitable phase of European development. 

Thus the lines are drawn. The choirs are marshalled on 
each wing of the w r orld's stage, Russia leading the one, the 
United States the other. Yet the world is too small for both, 
and the contest must end in the downfall of the one and the 
victory of the other. Let those who will speculate on the 
permanent universality of subjection ; the stakes are safe on 
the side of the .universe of sovereigns. Russia has expended 
all her forces in making a formidable display on her Western 
border. The United States are already digging the trenches 
for an attack in the rear. Our commerce in the North Pacific 
is constantly increasing in extent. If, as is not improbable, 
the gold mines of Siberia are found to extend nearly or quite 
to its Eastern coast, an irruption of republicanism, more dan- 
gerous than the inroads of the Circassians, threatens that 
" brazen image with the feet of clay." 

The strongest argument for the present practicability of 
the in federation of the world, is found in the fact that the 
Sclavonic race, its immediate and ostensible antagonists, are 
at bottom one of its most promising element. Russia, as an 
empire, is a German colony ; the Varegers, who established 
their power in Moscow in the tenth century, were Northmen, 
brothers of those originators of all filibustierism, who brought 



110 THE NEW ROME. 

the idea of the commercial unity of the world f om the creeks 
and inlets of the Skagger Rack, sacrificed to its glory the 
spoils of Britain, Germany, Gaul, and Italy, founded, medi- 
ately or immediately, the Scandinavian empire, the Hanseatic 
league, the Norman duchy, the English realm, and the Nea- 
politan kingdom, and enlivened the Teutonic races with the 
independence which enabled them to throw off the tutelage 
of Rome. Czarism itself is therefore the tribute paid by the 
yielding, social, and communistic spirit of the Sclavonic race 
to the prowess of German individual enterprise. The Em- 
peror is but a disaffected proconsul of our empire. He fights 
with our weapons, and under our flag. The present imperial 
family is even more immediately and exclusively German ; 
St. Petersburg is notoriously a German colony, founded upon 
German principles. All the Emperor's children are married 
to Germans ; the State's Chancellor is a German ; Paskic- 
witch is reported to be a runaway stroller of the name of 
Patschke, from near Leipsic. The leading officers of the 
government, civil as well as military, are drawn from the 
nobility of Livonia, who are of the pure lineage of the Teu- 
tonic knights, the conquerors of Russia and Poland. The 
Universities of Russia are German, and it is looked upon as 
an eligible resort for German adventurers of all kinds. In 
the more westerly countries inhabited by the Sclavonic race, 
this assimilative faculty is still more perceptible. The vast 
majority of the Austrians are Selaves, yet the government, 
the official language, the literature, and the education of the 
people is German. "When the Pauslavonic Congress assem- 



POLITICS. Ill 

bled at Prague, they were obliged to disregard their own 
rules of order, and debate in German because, in the multipli- 
city of half-cultivated Sclavonic dialects, that language was 
found to be the only medium of speech they had in common. 
The Sclaves are, in fact, to the Germans what the Celtic race 
were to the Roman, sometimes masters in battle, yet always 
pupils in thought. Nine hundred years ago, the undisposed 
dominion of this race extended to the Elbe, the Danube, and 
the Adriatic ; now the half of acknowledged Germany lies 
east of that boundary. This process of Germanization will 
continue, and with it the preparations for annexation. 

The facility of the Sclaves for Teutonic cultivation has been 
most brilliantly manifested in the great herald of the coming 
time, Louis Kossuth. None but a Sclave could have so ap- 
preciated the importance of English and American polity 
upon the liberties of the world. None but a Sclave could 
have so studied, and so mastered a foreign language as to 
address in it a native population, and carry them away for 
months with the magic of his eloquence. He did not think 
of annexation — probably abhors it ; but he has lit the lamps 
of thought upon either shore of ocean, and they will not cease 
to mingle their rays until the truth is made manifest. In 
preaching the " solidarity" of Europe and America, he has done 
enough ; and in preaching it with Sclavonian lips he has taught 
the equally weighty lesson, of the actual solidarity of its 
natural advocates with its apparent opponents. 

We have said nothing of the tutelary powers of Russia, 
because their destiny is inseparably knit to that of the ruling 



112 THE NEW ROME. 

house. But the following extract from a correspondence of 
the Tribune, certainly not an annexation paper, dated Oct. 
20, 1852, from Greece, a country subject to Russian dictation, 
and assuredly not a rendezvous of the filibusters, is of interest 
in the connection : — 

" The whole country is ill at rest. Otho has no children. The Con- 
stitution wrested from him requires that his successor shall be baptized in 
the Greek faitb. He is a Catholic ; his wife is a Protestant ; his subjects 
Greeks. Who shall be his successor ? That is the all-absorbing question. 
The country is anxious to know, but the Three Protecting Powers are to 
decide. One of them is Catholic, one is Protestant, the other Greek. A 
Russian can never be crowned here, nor a Frenchman, nor an Englishman ! 
A son of Leopold of Belgium is talked of, and an Oscar of Sweden. Ger- 
many has princes enough to spare ; but Greeks do not like Germans. They 
have had one. So things exist at present. I have been asked several 
times, very soberly, if America would not send them a King, and take 
them under their protection ! One very intelligent man went so far as to 
say he wished Greece could be annexed to the United States." 

9. — The Romanic Races. 

In his late London letter, Kossuth is seen to waver in his 
faith in Anglo-Saxon decentralization. " European democracy 
has scarcely any thing to take from England." He thinks 
"materialism the curse of our age." Yet what is materialism 
but man's preference fur a real over an illusive happiness *? 
At all events, to curse materialism is to curse England. 
Emigration, which is the assertion of man's superiority over, 
and independence of, inanimate nature, and fortuitous cir- 
cumstances, he regards as evidence of want of the " patriotism 
of the greatest number possible ;" yet national patriotism is 



POLITICS. . 113 

the vital element of centralization and absolutism. " To 
France Russia will not come," seems to point to a rising 
inclination of the great Agitator to re-enact the part of a 
Poniatowsky to a lesser Bonaparte ; may the kind genius of 
history protect her famed son from such a falling off! 

Compare the Kossuth of the past with Ledru Rollin. A 
friend calling upon the latter, found him sticking pins into a 
map. " See," he said, " these are the points to which the 
English have pushed their forces ; at all these they must be 
repulsed before there is " hope of progress." This is the 
great Frenchman's understanding of the history of the last 
three centuries ! Excited for a principle to which the genius 
of his nation is manifestly hostile, finding refuge where that 
principle is manifestly dominant, he would propagate it by 
enlisting its foes against its friends. 

The western empire has fallen, in the lapse of time, into 
three great nationalities, inhabiting the so-called " countries" 
of Spain, France, and Italy. All have accepted the Roman 
language and religion. In Spain, the victory of the Germanic 
Goths in the fourteenth century established the then greatest 
power of the world, an empire on which the sun never set. 
But that people was scorched by the acquisition of America, 
which to the race of Northern Europe has been so fraught 
with blessings. Spain has dwindled into a dependency upon 
the English, and no longer sits in the councils of the world. 

In Italy, the contest between the Guelphs and Ghibellines 
produced a like vitality, which expended itself, if not upon 
the fields of political power, at least upon those of commerce, 



114 THE NEW ROME. 

industry, science, and art. In all these she is still respectable, 
but no longer pre-eminent. Germany, England, and America 
are between them, superior to her subsequent productions in 
all these branches. Yet Italy has still much inner life; and 
though her natural hobby for the re-establishment of the 
Roman Empire must ever somewhat retard her progress, 
she will yet occupy an important place in the World's Con- 
federacy. Her connection with Germany must become more 
intimate from day to day ; and when the sovereigns imported 
from the North will no longer be Hapsburg simpletons, but 
scions of the American Republic, the bitterness of feeling 
which now imbues their intercourse will give place to a cor- 
dial brotherhood. 

Thus is France, the great obstacle to the formation of the 
World's Republic, left to stand alone. Though Charlemagne 
was a German, he inherited the Roman purple. Though the 
Capets were feudal chiefs of the Frankish tribe, they generated 
a Senate and an Imperator. They succeeded in annihilating 
the Frankish nobility by whom they were surrounded ; but 
at the expense of arming for their destruction the Gallic 
masses, who overturned Germanic royalty, Germanic aristoc- 
racy, Germanic protestantism, and Germanic individualism, 
and established upon the ruins the equality and subjection of 
the Roman provinces, their state religion, their centralization, 
and their military organization. A praetorian, born in the 
most obscure recess of the very centre of the Roman world, 
in the citadel of the Mediterranean, — predestined to become 
more of a myth than a man, was called to execute the great 



POLITICS. 115 

project of the French revolution. " La Grande Nation" rose 
as one man to protest against the clanger of a Teutonic do- 
minion of the world. " From Egypt," said the modern 
Hannibal, "I shall go to India; there crush the power of 
England, and return, by way of Moscow, to Paris, where I 
shall return six years older than I leave it." In his second 
Punic War he proposed to reverse the order, making Russia 
his starting point, and the Mediterranean his return route. 

To all this storm of genius the Germanic world had noth- 
ing to oppose beyond the calm Scipian respectability of a 

Wellington, and destiny. Yet she conquered India, 

Spain, and Waterloo. The fate of the world is sealed. 

The Germanic revulsion re-introduced the Frankish kings ; 
the reiterated rebellion of the Gauls, the Parisian republic ; 
and the recurring provincial exploitation of the republic, the 
Napoleonic empire. There is no reason why this reproduc- 
tion upon reproduction should not continue indefinitely ; the 
circles decreasing in magnitude in the same proportion as 
heretofore. The restoration of the Gauls will be followed 
by a restoration of the feudal Franks. This will undergo a 
modification into the Anglican industrial form of Germanism, 
corresponding to what took place in 1830. It is during such 
a period, the reign, perhaps, of the Prince de Joinville, that 
the principle of the sovereignty of the individual, and with 
it the disposition favorable to an infederation into the United 
States, will make a slow but steady progress. Such a process 
of mutation of interests is what should be called the revolu- 
tion in the American sense of the word. The mutation of 



116 THE NEW ROME. 

governmental forces, which is the French or European accep- 
tation of the term, will break in upon this process, just as the 
outbreak of '48 interrupted, rather than developed, the 
revolution, which had then proceeded for fifteen years. If 
there is a third explosion of this kind, the lava will settle into 
a third empire ; but it will be as much less formidable than 
that of Napoleon III., as that is inferior to the fabric of the 
Corsican. Meantime, the American eagle will continue to 
spread his flight over England, Germany, and Russia, and all 
that England, Germany, and Russia have made their own. 

10. — The Moguls. 

Speculation is rife on the subject of the Japanese expedi- 
tion, and its consequences will soon become visible. China 
is of perhaps greater ultimate importance. Three hundred 
and seventy millions — one-third of the human race — are 
gathered in its pale. Of their present condition some idea 
may be obtained from the following extract from the work 
ofM. Gutzlan:— 

" Foreigners, who know nothing about the internal state of the 
country, are apt to imagine that there reigns everlasting peace. Nothing 
is, however, more erroneous ; insurrections of villages, cities, and districts, 
are of frequent occurrence. The refractory spirit of the people, the op- 
pression and embezzlement of the mandarins, and other causes, such as 
dearth and demagogues, frequently cause an unexpected revolt. 

" In these cases, the destruction of property and hostility against the 
rulers of the land, — especially if these have been tyrants, — is often 
carried to great excess ; there are instances of the infuriated mob broiling 
their magistrates over a slow fire. On the other hand, the cruelty of 



POLITICS. 117 

government, when victorious, knows no bounds ; the treatment of political 
prisoners is really so shocking as to be incredible, if one had not been an 
eyewitness of these inhuman deeds. 

" One of the most common evils is starvation. The population is very 
dense ; the means of subsistence are, in ordinary times, frequently not 
above the demand ; and it is. therefore, nothing extraordinary to witness, 
on the least failure of the crop, utter wretchedness and misery. To pro- 
vide for all the hungry mouths is impossible ; and the cruel policy of the 
mandarins carries their indifference so far as to affirm that starvation is re- 
quisite to thin the dense masses of the people. 

" Whenever such a judgment has come upon the land, and the people 
are in want of the necessaries of life, dreadful disorders soon arise, and the 
most powerful government would not be able to put down the rising and 
robberies which are committed on the strength of this prevailing misery. 
There seems to be a total change in the peaceful nature of the inhabitants, 
and many a patient laborer turns fiercely upon his rich neighbor, like a 
wolf or a tiger, to devour his substance. No one can have an idea of the 
auarchy which, on such occasions, ensues, and the utter demoralization of 
the people." 

An account of the 7th of August, 1852, obtained by way of 
San Francisco, relates a horrible story of the murder of fifty 
thousand persons, — men, women, and children, — by the rebels, 
in a successful assault upon the city of Chunchow. The 
slaughter is said to have lasted for three days and three nights. 
Though not authenticated, the report is characteristic. Mr. 
Gutzlaff continues : 

" Yet, as soon as relief is afforded, and a rich harvest promises fair, the 
spirit of order again prevails, and outrages are put a stop to. The people 
then combine, arm themselves, and proceed in thousands to catch marau- 
ders like wild beasts. No mercy is shown on such occasions, and the man- 
darins, on account of their weakness, cannot interfere. Scenes of this de- 
scription very often occurred, without giving rise to severe reflection on the 
character of Taoukwangs administration." 

This shows that the Chinese have need of America; the 



118 T II E NEW R O M E . 

Chinese emigration shows that the want will be met. In 
August, the number of Chinese emigrants in California was 
estimated at 50,000. The movement has since received a 
check from the brutal conduct of the Anglo-Americans ; but 
this suspension having operated as an invaluable lesson, and 
the Anglos having learned to understand the value of these 
patient laborers, and to treat them accordingly, the influx 
will soon be greater than ever. If it is as well supported by 
the masses of the mother-country, as that from Europe has 
been, the day will not be far distant when America will num- 
ber more Chinese than Caucasians. An eminent German 
geographer, Kapp, now residing in Texas, once said that as 
the history of modern times grew out of the invention of 
gunpowder, of printing, and the discovery of America, so 
most modern history will be governed by steam, electricity, 
and the unlocking of China. We may well suppose that the 
magazine of civilization for 5000 years will not fail to exert 
an influence upon the fledglings who so saucily knock at her 
gates. The Chinese in California like the American system 
well ; in a recent procession they participated as usual, bear- 
ing a banner with the inscription : " Rush for Republican- 
ism." And they read in republicanism the liberty to earn 
their bread. Their plodding propensities make them an 
excellent material for the industrial speculations of the 
Europeans; the two, between them, will certainly establish 
the prosperity of the Pacific state. From these relations 
we may calculate upon an emigration of American business 
men to China, in return for that of Chinese laborers to Cal- 



POLITICS. 119 

ifornia. In the fusion of nationalities, we find the integration 
of humanity. 

The time is past for comparing man to the vermin on the 
leaf, of which each species can only infest its particular plant. 
History now advances with great strides, to hasten on the day 
when all the nations of the earth shall be one people, united 
in a single state. No longer a circumscribed portion of lands, 
the new " orbis terrarum" shall encircle the globe ; and as 
ancient Rome assembled all the gods of her empire in a single 
Pantheon, so shall the ideas of all nations be marshalled into 
unity. The signs of the times are clear and unmistakable, and 
" The New Rome" awakens to her task, and is resolved upon its 
execution. Let her raise her banner of stars over land and 
sea, the token of perdition to the despots and redemption to 
the peoples, who may be convinced : In hoc signo vincent ! 



II.— SOCIAL ORGANIZATION. 



TT is ijnpossible to write this title without a sardonic smile. 
The subject is a vexed one, about which all the world is 
more or less at fault ; and people are never willing to learn 
what they do not already know. Men always have the most 
decided opinions about matters which they have least inves- 
tigated ; and while few, very few, have given the social 
problem a candid examination, all are clear, either, with 
Macaulav, i; that Socialism is a doctrine hostile to all sciences, 
to all arts, to all industry, to all domestic charities, — a 
doctrine which, if carried into effect, would in thirty years 
undo all that thirty centuries have done for mankind, and 
would make the provinces of France and Germany as savage 
as Congo or Patagonia ;" or, with Freedley, the ingenious 
author of that truly American work, that the Socialists 
" would have the world a sort of well-regulated lunatic 
asvlum, in which the inmates are to have a certain amount 
of work to perform, apparently with a view partly to sup- 
6 



122 THE NEW ROME. 

port life, and partly to prevent the too frequent necessity of 
trepanning and straight-waistcoating ;" or, with the Socialists, 
that a " reconstruction of society," and a " war of extermi- 
nation between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie," so over- 
rides in importance all considerations of political forms, that 
a man who will take the time to write a chapter on the 
latter subject, is necessarily incapable of estimating the value 
of the former. Between these two classes of readers, the 
present pages are in imminent danger of falling to the 
ground unturned. 

Could we but make up for our losses here, by gains in 
another quarter ! There is a growing sentiment in this 
country, erroneous in part, but miscalled criminal by over- 
zealous politicians, which finds expression in the words, " I 
don't care for politics ; politics is a trade, and let every man 
mind his own trade ; it is not mine, and I take no interest in 
it." The readiness with which this view of the case is 
condemned by those in authority, is one among the many 
instances which show that we are still hedged for many pur- 
poses in the Aristotelian scholasticism, which would rather 
sit in judgment on what it sees and hears, than investigate 
and reflect upon it. The expression is fraught with the 
important lesson, that mankind in the present age are 
governed by interest, and not by force. Force is the subject- 
matter of politics ; and hence politics, as such, is interesting 
only to those whose ways of thought revolve in a circle from 
which the world of to-day has departed. That which can 
alone interest the men of the present is the science of 



SOCIAL ORGANIZATION. 123 

interests, the laws of their action and re-action, the fitness of 
their adjustment. But the science of interests is socialism ! 
But this appreciation of socialism — we shall henceforth 
make free use of the term, without any apology to the 
gentlemen from Congo — instead of driving politics from the 
scene of action, only restores it to its proper place. Inter- 
ests depend upon force ; the individual or the class, who have 
the management of government forces, exert an influence 
upon our interests very different from that which they would 
exercise if deprived of such management. True, the actual 
exercise of force is seldom resorted to ; and where it is, the 
preponderance of power is often found to be really, not where 
it is considered as officially reposing, but on the opposite 
side. But the true agency of power is in those innumerable 
cases where it is not tested, but presumed to be irresistible ; 
in those transactions of every-day life in which the individual 
obeys the laws without reflecting whether he might resist 
them or not. Interest is but a calculation of contingencies ; 
the contingency of necessity and of force being the weighti- 
est in the scale; as, therefore, we shift the relations of 
government forces, and of those who wield them, we shift 
the base of our calculations — in other words, our interests. 
If the non-payment of a debt involves the contingency of 
imprisonment, it will be our interest to desist from many an 
enterprise in which we would fearlessly engage, if the penalty 
of failure were only a loss of property ; if the loss of a 
homestead is involved, we shall be more timid than if it is 
secured from expropriation. Thus politics is the necessary 



124 THE NEW ROME. 

handmaid of socialism ; in striving after the adjustment of 
interests we must necessarily work for the removal of those 
forcible, i. e., political, obstacles which obstruct that consum- 
mation. 

Politics, therefore, must give the form of every matter of 
public progress, while it can never embrace the essence of 
the contest. In like manner, however, while a social problem 
must always underlie every public agitation, the form of the 
agitation itself can never be social. This is the error of the 
socialists, when they work a tremendous public enthusiasm 
for the purpose of establishing a tradesmen's association, a 
bank of barter, or a labor exchange. Socialism, the content 
of interests, is a matter not of enthusiasm, but of speculation ; 
not of sacrifice, but of gain ; not, therefore, of agitation, but 
of business. Business is the mighty godhead that is trans- 
forming the world ; the realization of interest, as it is taught 
and learned, passes from man to man, from class to class, and 
thus, ever upheaving and ever allaying, works out its mighty 
task of transforming the world, which it began when America 
was drawn from her concealment, and which will be com- 
pleted when America shall have carried her spirit and her 
laws over the world. This is the plain but pregnant meaning 
of that fantastic " reconstruction of society," which so troubles 
our socialistic doctrinaires, and their respectable antagonists. 

" El oro es excellentissimo !" was the lesson that Colum- 
bus learned on the marvellous shores of the Western Indies, 
and transmitted to those that sent him. It is the key to the 
subsequent history of the Old and New World. " Gold," 



SOCIAL ORGANIZATION. 125 

the double-distilled extract of the earth, is the representative 
of its avail to man ; the Earth, which first became a vested 
idea when the Genoese sprung upon the strand of its farther 
extremity, is the great source from which all our wishes are 
to be gratified. These two ideas form the poles between 
which vibrates the existence of modern humanity. The mag- 
netic fluid that connects them is the activity of man, labor in 
the largest sense, more strictly labor as the positive, produc- 
tive force, business as the corrective element. 

Making money, the acquisition of wealth, the pursuit of 
happiness, is the object of man's exertions in modern times. 
The first and last are not identical, but stand in the necessary 
relations of ends and means. To make every man rich is to 
give every man the means to accomplish his purposes ; and 
this is the object of true socialism. The world is a great 
committee of ways and means to every man's happiness. 

The earth being the source of wealth, and therefore of 
happiness, it was the first object of the Columbian spirit to 
subject all the earth to the activity of man. This task, be- 
queathed by him to the Spaniards, proved too arduous for 
them, and was soon transferred to the Germanic race in the 
person of the Dutch, from whom it passed to the masters of 
the present, the Anglo-Saxons. Their prows now beat against 
the icy walls of the Northern Sea, and their anchors rake the 
pearlbeds of the Indies. Wherever ships can penetrate, the 
Angles have made their way ; yet there is much still to be 
done, before the 2,500,000 square miles of land upon the 
earth's surface shall be so far reduced into the possession of 



126 THE NEW ROME. 

her 1,100,000,000 of inhabitants, that the average yield of 
each square mile of ground shall meet its complement of 440 
souls. It were but silly to quarrel about the little we have, 
to forgetfulness of the vast domain we may yet acquire. 

The direct disembowelling of the earth, to rob it of its 
gold, was the first allurement which drew the people of 
Europe out of their transatlantic hiding-places. It is curious 
to note the form of transition from heaven to earth which 
took place in the minds of those, who, with the blessing of 
holy church, left the sacred precincts of Rome to serve mam- 
mon in the wilds of America. The admiral went to obtain 
the gold of Cathay, for the purpose of buying troops for the 
conquest of the Holy Sepulchre. The English Puritans, tired 
of being martyrs at home, sought for places where they 
might " catch plenty of fish and worship God according to 
their own consciences." The Huguenots sought refuge in 
South Carolina from persecutions and from confiscations. 
Penn found here a forest, where he could enjoy at once, what 
in England he found was not to be united, the freedom of his 
faith and the honors of a principality. The Germans that 
settled round him fled from the Palatinate and from the 
Bishop of Salzburg, at once to save their souls and to rescue 
their little all. Calvert founded a similar colony, on a simi- 
lar foundation. In the colonization of New York and 
Virginia we find the wwldly designs of the founders with 
scarcely any religious admixture. The colonization of 
America is the assertion of man's right to pursue his earthly 
happiness. 



SOCIAL ORGANIZATION. 127 

But while thus containing in itself a protest against the 
church, it involved in its creation an avowal of the power of 
the state, as then existing. All the colonies were government 
enterprises, — corporations. The Plymouth, the Virginia, the 
New Amsterdam Company, the Proprietaries, derived their 
existence as such, from the government that had chartered 
them. The government naturally desired to draw its profits 
from its own enterprises ; the colonists naturally desired to 
monopolize the fruits of their own labors. Thus arose a 
social contest which Lorenzo Sabine correctly describes as 
follows : — 

" Many things which are necessary to a right understanding of the 
revolutionary controversy have been, as I conceive, wholly omitted^or 
only partially and obscurely stated. It has been common, for example, 
to insist that questions of ' Taxation,' that points of ' Abstract Liberty,' 
produced the momentous struggle, which resulted in dismembering the 
British empire. To me the documentary history, the state-papers of 
the period, teach nothing more clearly than this, namely, that almost 
every matter brought into discussion was practical, and in some form or 
other related to labor, to some branch of common industry. Our 
fathers did, indeed, in their appeals to the people, embody their opposi- 
tion to the colonial system or form of government in one expressive 
term — ' Taxation' — ' Taxation without Representation.' But whoever 
has examined the acts of Parliament which were resisted, has found that 
nearly all of them inhibited labor. There were no less than twenty-nine 
laws which restricted and bound down colonial industiy. Neither of 
these laws touched so much as the ' south-west side of a hair,' of an 
' abstraction,' and hardly one of them, until the passage of the - stamp 
act,' imposed a direct 'tax.' They were aimed at the "North and Eng- 
land lost the atfection of the mercantile and maritime classes of the 
Northern colonies full a generation before she alienated the South. They 
forbade the use of water-falls, the erecting of machinery, of looms and 
spindles, and the working of wood and iron ; they set the king's arrow 



128 THE NEW ROME. 

upon trees that rotted in the forest ; they shut out markets for boards and 
fish, and seized sugar and molasses, and the vessels in which these articles 
were carried ; and they defined the limitless ocean as but a narrow path- 
way to such of the lands that it embosoms as wore the British flag. To 
me, then, the great object of the Revolution was to release labor from 
these restrictions. Free laborers, — inexcusable in this — began with sack- 
ing houses, overturning public offices, and emptying tar-barrels and pillow- 
cases upon the heads of those who were employed to enforce these 
oppressive acts of Parliament ; and when the skill and high intellect 
which were enlisted in their cause, and which vainly strove to moderate 
their excess, failed to obtain a peaceable redress of the wrongs of which 
they complained, and were driven either to abandon the end in view, or to 
combine and wield their strength, men of all avocations rallied upon the 
field and embarked upon the sea, to retire from neither until the very 
frame-work of the colonial system was torn away, and every branch of 
industry conld be pursued without fines, penalties, and imprisonment. 

" Such are the opinions, at least, which I have formed on the questions 
upon which, among the mass of the people, the contest hinged ; which 
finally united persons of every employment in life in an endeavor to get 
lid of prohibitions that remonstrance could not repeal or even humanize' 
For a higher or holier purpose than this, men have never expended their 
money or poured out their life-blood in battle ! * * * 

" The whigs admitted that the power of parliament extended to the 
' Regulation of Commerce,' that the maritime concerns of the empire 
should be under the supreme control of one head. They set up a subtle 
distinction between ' internal and external taxation,' but I confess I have 
never been able to understand it. To me there was not, as they argued 
there was, a difference either in theory or fact, between demanding postage 
on a letter, and exacting a duty on the paper on which it is written ; be- 
tween the ' stamp' duty on a ship's manifest and clearance, and the import 
duty on '■painters' colors' spread on her sides; the 'glass' of her cabin- 
windows, and the 'sugar,' ' molasses,' ' wine,' and ' tea' stowed upon her 
deck. Yet, while the principle itself was conceded, every application was 
complained of as a grievance." 

The American revolution, then, was the divorce of Amer- 
ican industry from the tutelage of the British government. It 
put a new face on the oceanic commerce. The Americans 



SOCIAL ORGANIZATION. 129 

were no longer mere factors of the home country, — the agents 
in the exploitation of the colonies ; both were now home 
countries, each could equally exploit the other ; each was at 
liberty to consider its own interests as paramount, and to 
serve the other only so far as, by so doing, it served itself. 
This expansion of the external necessarily led to a corre- 
sponding increase of the internal trade. But the trade of the 
citizens, both internal and external, was now seized upon by 
the state governments as a source from which to obtain the 
funds necessary to liquidate the enormous debt incurred by 
the war. Thus American industry, the great object of the 
struggle, was in danger of becoming its victim. A move- 
ment was originated for a combination against the prohibi- 
tions and restrictions thus imposed, which resulted in the 
adoption of the Federal Constitution. The American Union 
is the divorce of American industry from the tutelage of the 
state governments. 

It was consummated by the adoption of the revolutionary 
debt, and the provision of means for its liquidation. But the 
constitution invests the federal authority with power to 
" regulate commerce," and these powers it was denied to 
exercise. The people had submitted to it as a relief from the 
control of the state governments, but they never countenanced 
the exercise of any control by the new government itself. 
The alien and sedition bill were such efforts, and doubtless 
had a most important share in the overthrow of the federal 
party ; but while these proved the most powerful engines in 
the hands of political leaders, the excise was most effective 
6* 



130 THE NEW ROME. 

among the masses. The victory of the JefFersonian party 
was the divorce of American internal industry from the 
tutelage of government in the shape of taxes and imposts. 
The great declarer, in his inaugural, gives " the sum of good 
government as a wise frugality, which does not take from the 
mouth of labor the bread it has earned, and which, restraining 
men from injuring one another, leaves them otherwise free 
to regulate their own pursuits." 

This freedom was turned, by the course of European 
events, into the channel of the carrying trade ; American 
shipowners grew rich on the security afforded by their neutral 
keels to the merchandise transported between belligerent 
nations. England rebelled against the carrying trade, but 
the war of 1812 was its vindication. It was in those eventful 
times that American industry conquered the ocean, and won 
its first victory over the laws of nations. 

During the wars of the French Empire, an American dis- 
oovery was perfected, destined to act on a revolutionary ele- 
ment in society, long after the remembrance of Napoleon 
shall have begun to pale its fire. It has been often said, and 
truly, that the democracies of Greece and Rome were enabled 
to attain, by their slave population, which relieved the ruling 
class from the burdens of degrading labor, an intellectual and 
artistic perfection which, to the hard-working sovereigns of 
our day is unapproachable ; and again, that our universal ac- 
knowledgment of the rights of man give us a moral superi- 
ority not to be resigned at any price. To unite both these 
perfections, it was necessary to yoke nature herself to her 



SOCIAL ORGANIZATION. 131 

own subjection. This was done in 1805, when the capital of 
Livingston and the genius of Robert Fulton launched the 
first steamboat on the Hudson. That elemental power which 
uplifts the mountains and makes the valleys quake, was then 
chained to the car of man's volition. It is made to do our 
spinning, our weaving, our sawing, cleaving, and digging ; it 
whirls us over the solid earth a hundred miles an hour ; and 
it wafts us in a few days over the sea, where before mankind 
were thousands of years in finding the way. It has made 
men into gods, for it has placed the elements at their beck. 

Steam has caused all the pressure and all the explosions 
with which modern society has been visited. But how could 
men expect to wield the thunder without buying their expe- 
rience ! Its first operation, as applied to inland navigation, 
was a wonderful increase of facilities for inland travel ; as 
such it was the indispensable engine for the peopling of the 
Great West. The following table of the increase of popula- 
tion of the Western cities shows two periods of sudden 
growth, — one during the fifteen years ensuing the introduc- 
tion of the steamboat, the other in the five years following 
the general construction of European and American railroads, 
and of ocean steamships : 

Census. Cincinnati. Pittsburg. Louisville. New Orleans. 

1800 150 1,565 600 9,650 

1810 2,540 4,768 1,350 17,242 

1820 ^9,602 7,243 4,012 27,176 

1830 24,8S1 24,412 10,306 46,310 

1840 46,338 36,478 21,214 102,296 

1850 115,438 67,871 43,277 120,951 



132 THE NEW ROME. 

The increase of population could not but be accompanied 
with increase of industry. But steam was soon applied 
directly to productive machinery, and thus brought on that 
manufacturing enterprise which marks the present day. As 
if in anticipation of the discovery, and simultaneously with 
it, Humphreys had set the example of an improvement in 
the breed of sheep, by the importation of merinoes. Thus 
American broadcloths were speedily manufactured. The 
European wars served at the same time to keep out 
European competition, and thus facilitate the inception of 
home enterprises. This being removed by the conclusion of 
a peace in 1814, a substitute for it was found in the "Ameri- 
can system." 

In so far as this system contemplated the elevation of the 
business and industry of the country, it deserved the name, 
for business is the vital element of American society. The 
transformation of our teeming wealth in natural productions, 
into articles suited for consumption, the encouragement of 
means of communication from one section of the country to 
the other, thus preserving the level of exchanges, the exten- 
sion of the representative of value, preserving its fluidity and 
manageableness, tended to further the triumph of American 
destiny. The construction of the Erie canal, by the energy 
of De "Witt Clinton, is an epoch in our history, the import- 
ance of which can hardly be overrated. The Lowell fac- 
tories represent the dominion of man over nature ; and the 
credit system, by its very existence, circumscribed and brief 
and variable as it is, manifests a difference as between earth 



SOCIAL ORGANIZATION. 133 

and heaven, intervening between American and European 
society. There is no more flagrant proof of the colonialism 
which still pervades our habits of thought, than the docility 
with which we are generally disposed to chime in with 
European tirades against the credit system, which allows a 
journeyman mechanic to act as a capitalist, on no other 
ground than the public faith in his determination to carve out 
for himself a kingdom. 

The encouragement of manufactures at the place of raw 
productions, is based upon the consideration of the waste 
labor expended in transportation and re-transportation. The 
American way to relieve this difficulty would have been the 
encouragement of transportation until it should become so 
easy and so cheap as to cancel the disparity. This course 
was resorted to within the boundaries of the country, and 
with triumphant success ; but as against the rest of the world, 
recourse was had to a government restraint upon commercial 
industry, in the supposed interest of manufacturing efforts. 
Thus communication, the one great leveller and equalizer, 
the unfailing regulator of all social discords and promoter 
of all social activity, was dissevered instead of strengthened. 
In the matter of internal •communications, a reverse course 
was adopted. • The necessity of these, facilities, as dependent 
upon, and facilitative of, population and settlement, is ob- 
vious. The American method of promoting such enterprises 
is to throw open the land to settlers whose necessities and 
demands will lead to the undertakings required ; instead of 
this, a policy was adopted, which, by keeping the lands in the 



134 THE NEW ROME. 

grasp of the government, retarded the very population 
whose intercourse it was intended to promote. Thus nature, 
the very source of all social existence, was walled out from 
society. The value of credit, the anticipation of labor, as a 
make-weight to the power of capital, the hoarding of labor is 
manifest. The American support of it would have required 
the removal of the privileges of capital, consisting in its 
power to embargo labor, and the divorce of credit from 
capital, by abrogating the laws which guarantee the debts 
owed by the capitalist debtor, to the prejudice of borrowers 
without capital. Instead of this credit was dealt out as a 
government favor by the governmental establishment of cor- 
porations, based upon capital, in whom credit was monopo- 
lized to the detriment of the unincorporated. Thus was credit 
chained to the car of capital, and business, which should 
have effected its disenthralment, made to rivet its chains. 

The "American system," in thus denying the vivifying 
capacity of business to effect the social adjustment and ad- 
vance, was un-American ; it was anti-American, in its faith 
in government as a promoter of public welfare and social 
harmony. If it had been required to devise a " European 
system" for the management of American affairs, the task 
would have been well performed by the construction of the 
system thus presented, as a plan of government action. In 
its inception it is a substitute for war ; in its intent a promo- 
tion of government; in its tendency a preservative of nation- 
alism ; in its whole scope and bearing a restraint upon the 
individual, and a drag upon business. 



SOCIAL ORGANIZATION. 135 

A truer sentiment was never expressed than is contained 
in the following resolution of the Industrial Congress of 1852 : 

" That the American Revolution is yet in progress, and that its mission 
■will never be fulfilled until those features of our condition, laws, and insti- 
tutions that had their origin in the original intentions of the British crown 
to plant upon American soil monarchical institutions, and the uncurrent prin- 
ciples of action engendered by them, are in process of extinguishment or 
entireldy estroyed." 

The social revolution of our country was brought to a 
head by this declared attempt to subject our social relations 
to our government action. The divorce of Church and State 
was the purport of the colonization of America ; the separa- 
tion of state and commonwealth was the task of its contin- 
uance. By commonwealth I understand the organization of 
interests, in contradistinction to the state, the organization of 
forms. The protective tariff was at first favored by the agri- 
cultural interests of the South and West, and opposed by the 
merchants of the North and East. Merchants are better 
business men than farmers, and therefore see the needlessness 
of a government interference to promote business by getting 
into its way. The event proved the fallacy of the protective 
dogma ; the merchants, who were to have been broken down 
or controlled by the new regime, invested their capital in 
manufactures, and prospered in spite of it ; business proved a 
better ally than protection; while the planters, who had 
thought to establish their ascendancy upon the protective 
tariff, — it was first introduced by Calhoun, — found their raw 
products running away in spite of the tariff, for want of busi- 
ness tact to hold them in their hands. This involved a change 



136 THE NEW ROME. 

of position ; and this change was probably a principal cause 
of the length to which the contest has been spun out. Web- 
ster and Calhoun had to unsay every thing they had said on 
one side of the question, to make out a case on the other. 

The battle with the United States Bank intervened. We 
have seen that the rise of mercantile corporations was not 
only cotemporaneous, but coincident with the settlement of 
the East and West Indies ; they represent the alliance formed 
by modern government and modern commercial communities 
for the overthrow of the alliance then subsisting between the 
feudal state and the Catholic Church. That achieved, com- 
merce began to rebel against its governmental ally, and in the 
American revolution the colonial corporations were abolished. 
With the establishment of the central government, its excres- 
cences, in the shape of government corporations, reappeared. 
The Bank of North America had been established under the 
auspices of the continental congress ; it was followed by that 
of the United States Bank by the first congress ; of the New 
York Bank in 1795, the Manhattan Company, — erected osten- 
sibly to furnish the city of New York with pure water, but 
in reality to play banking privileges into the hands of the 
Republican politicians ; and by the establishment of a numer- 
ous brood of banking, insurance, and loan companies, who 
exerted sufficient influence, about the close of the century, to 
carry a prohibition of individual banking in all the commer- 
cial states. The United States Bank, however, particularly 
after the renewal of its charter in 1810, overcrowed all its 
compeers, and even grappled with the government to which it 



SOCIAL ORGANIZATION. id i 

owed its existence. The question, whether or not the United 
States were to be converted into a joint-stock enterprise for 
the emolument of the shareholders in a moneyed corporation, 
— the same which, in almost the same form, provoked the 
French uprising of 1848 — was decided by the Jacksonian 
victory. " Let the government attend to its own affairs," said 
Silas Wright when he introduced the Sub-Treasury Bill, the 
ultimate fruit of that struggle, " and let the people attend to 
theirs. Let the government take care that it secures a sound 
currency for its own use, and let it leave all the rest to the 
states and to the people." The American government will 
nevermore interfere with the credit system of the American 
commonwealth. 

We have now to notice a purely social phenomenon of 
more modern history. We have seen that industry is two- 
fold : it produces and it distributes. The intense activity of 
modern society produces a constant growth of both these 
functions; but that growth is dependent in part upon fortui- 
tous circumstances, and therefore irregular ; and these irregu- 
larities occur not only in the development of each particular 
function, but still more in the relative advance of the two. 
When the distributive power preponderates, the level of pro- 
duction and consumption is preserved, and the rise of wealth 
is equable and steady. The invention of the steamboat was 
of this class ; and its introduction introduced the era of pros- 
perity which distinguishes the present century from all others. 
Tariffs, banks, and all mercantile corporations, in their incep- 
tion, have the same effect ; they are always originated bv 



138 THE NEW ROME. 

enterprising business men, whose aim — business — is the com- 
munication and distribution of wealth. Hence it is not to be 
denied that the United States Bank, and the virtual exclusion 
of foreign fabrics by the wars of France and England, served 
as an additional stimulus to the diffusion, and therefore to the 
healthy increase, of American prosperity. But in their con- 
tinuance, these institutions, just like the demagogues who 
become tyrants when in power, lose their distributive charac- 
ter, and become retentive: their projectors having made their 
fortunes by business, no longer use their capital themselves, 
but sell their capital to others, at the highest prices it will 
fetch ; thus putting an embargo upon business instead of a 
bonus. This is what is thoughtlessly called " ruinous specu- 
lation." 

This influence was perceptible soon after 1816. It was 
enhanced by the application of steam to productive manufac- 
turing purposes, which soon glutted all the avenues opened by 
inland steam navigation, and produced more than could be 
quickly distributed. The confinement of machinery, and with 
it, of modern industry, to manufacturing productions, and its 
exclusion from agriculture, was the cause of another dispro- 
portion. Not until the Irish Disencumbered Estates Bill, and 
the sales made in pursuance of it, has the production of arti- 
cles of food been treated as a branch of concentrated business 
effort. This state of things brought about a surplus of pro- 
duction over speculation, a glut of the market, a fall of prices, 
a comparative scarcity of provisions, a stoppage of enterprise, 
a panic, a collapse of business and of credit — in short, one of 



SOCIAL ORGANIZATION. 139 

those striking phenomena, a commercial crisis. — Steam will 
occasionally burst a boiler. 

Karl Marx, a Social thinker, who has subjected these occur- 
rences to a critical analysis, arrives at the conclusion that 
these periodical revulsions must constantly recur, with increased 
violence, until they end in the disruption of the social struc- 
ture. That they will recur until business and producing labor 
are brought into a lasting correspondence, is not to be denied ; 
but that a super-accretion of production, of the essence of 
wealth, can lead to a state of universal misery, is on its 
face a contradiction in terms. The mere substitution of a 
violent distribution for a regular one, although it may be 
attended with some waste and destruction, is none the less a 
purifying and invigorating, not a weakening process. True, 
every crisis is more violent than the last, but that is owing to 
the larger sphere of its operations. Every crisis has been 
followed by a return of prosperity, greater than any that has 
preceded it. The relation of a commercial crisis to the social 
system is analogous, in every particular, to that of a thunder- 
storm in the atmosphere. A perfect and ubiquitous system 
of electric conductors would avert the former, and a perfect 
system of intercourse and communication will render the 
latter impossible. 

Every crisis of the kind has been followed, and in part 
corrected by increased facilities of communication. That of 
1825 was followed by the introduction of the canal system, 
of which the Erie canal, built in 1811, had been only the 



140 THE NEW ROME. 

pioneer. The Ohio, the Lehigh, the Farmington canal, and a 
host of others, date their existence from this period. 

The discovery of the mineral wealth of some of the states 
was a counteracting agent. The overgrowth of the United 
States Bank was still more important ; the division of its 
influence with the state corporations availed little, since the 
existence of the monster was preserved by a Pennsylvania 
charter, and since the favored banks soon became as rampant 
as their ancient rival. The land speculations consequent on 
the inordinate accretion of capital completed the disaster, and 
the crisis of 1837 was unavoidable. Its effect was neutralized 
by the railway system, begun in 1835. 

This was the last great crisis. That of 1842 was produced 
by no extraordinary impetus given to productive, nor by any 
sudden restraint upon distributive industry ; and though, for 
that very reason, its bare existence is a proof of the deficiency 
of our social adjustment, its inconsiderable violence also proves 
the correctness of the explanation here given. It was followed 
by the era of ocean steam navigation. 

Themistocles taught the ancient democracy that the ship 
is the main organ of the welfare of nations. Well he might ! 
for it is the organ of intercourse, the triumphal car of business. 
There is not a more important object of humanitary care and 
attention than the improvement and perfection of ship-build- 
ing. Steam, as we have seen, is a little younger than the 
century; in every year of its existence it has encroached 
upon and circumscribed the domain of the sailing craft. It is 
now fourteen years since the first ocean steamer was launched. 



SOCIAL ORGANIZATION. 141 

The Cunard company are at present engaged upon the con- 
struction of their fifth set of vessels, of which every one 
betrayed a great improvement upon its predecessor. It has 
been hitherto supposed that steam would engross but a small 
portion of the transportation of merchandise, and would 
rather encourage than supersede the use of sailing vessels. 
This hypothesis proves to be an error : we shall in future 
have no sailing-vessels, but shall navigate exclusively by steam. 
Our old rival, England, has struck upon the vessels which 
are destined to rule the ocean — the iron screw-propellers. 
Americans build the best and the fleetest paddle-steamers for 
our rivers, and our clippers for the sea have received, if pos- 
sible, still more attention. The English, with their propellers, 
have taken a middle course, and are likely to win. Of 
course, the United States will ere long dispute the vantage. 
It is not to be denied that the American clippers have made 
the quickest trips on record ; but the average speed is the 
important criterion, and that tells, if we except the long trips 
around the world, vastly in favour of steam. The screw con- 
sumes but one-third of the fuel needed for the paddle-wheel, 
admits of the freer use of sails, and will give the same average 
speed. In the course of the past summer, the paddle-steamer 
Humboldt, of one thousand-horse power, and the screw-pro- 
peller Great Britain, of five hundred, left New York at the 
same time, and arrived in England together. Another proof 
of the approaching disuse of the mere sailing vessel is found 
in the fact that the three great naval powers, the United 
States, England, and France, have just concluded to build no 



142 THE NEW ROME. 

more sailing-vessels for their navies, but to confine them- 
selves to steamers. The merchant marine will shortly follow 
their example. The list of vessels in course of construction 
at New York for the first half of the year 1852, mention two 
steamers for every sailing vessel. In England the old coal- 
coasters are being displaced by steamers. Australia and the 
Cape of Good Hope are visited by screw-steamers, and the 
propellers of the Cunard Company will soon absorb a very 
considerable portion of the forwarding trade between New 
York and Liverpool. Thus the use of sails will become so 
circumscribed, that in a few years even a clipper will be 
regarded as a curious relic* 

This point gained, the improvement of the steamer will 
progress even more rapidly than at present, when every 
month brings a material advance upon the last. Iron is 
more and more favored as a material, which gives them 



* After the above was -written, the following corroborative remarks 
were discovered in an English essay, entitled " A Treatise on the Screw 
Propeller, by John Bourne." The author, a son of the late director of the 
Peninsular and Oriental Company, is thoroughly versed in every thing 
relating to the shipping interest, and his opinion entitled to great respect. 
He says, in reference to the speedy disuse of sails : — " This appears, at 
first glance, a startling change, but it is one which is now contemplated 
by the majority of practical men as one of positive necessity, and one 
which Will tend to the ultimate profit and extension of the great interest 
by whom this revolution will be accomplished." M. Bourne is of opinion 
that the paddle-wheel will have to be retained for river navigation 
and for mail-steamers. We must be permitted to dissent from this reserva- 
tion: screw-steamers will travel more swiftly than any paddles, and a 
double-screw would overcome all difficulties in the former case. 



SOCIAL ORGANIZATION. 143 

superior lightness ; and the ships stretch out their propor- 
tions until they resemble the canoes of the Indians, in form 
as well in speed. The keel of the English propeller Wave 
Queen is two hundred feet, and her breadth of beam but 
thirteen. Professor Salomon is now engaged, at Washington, 
upon the application of carbonic acid as a motor ; which, if 
successful, will be attended with immense saving in point of 
fuel and machinery, and gain in point of power. The time 
is near when our steamers will move at the rate of thirty 
miles an hour. 

The crisis of '48, aggravated as it was by the failure of 
crops in 1846, and by the political convulsions, was very 
severe in Europe. In America, owing, perhaps, in part, to 
the prevention of over production by the tariff of '46, to 
the increased consumption produced by the Mexican war, to 
the failure of the before-mentioned efficient causes of the 
European crisis, and to the opening of our Pacific commerce, 
it was almost unfelt. Yet it was succeeded by the applica- 
tion of a curative, more remarkable than any that have pre- 
ceded it, more wondrous than the great cause of the plethora, 
steam, itself. The result of the Presidential election of '48 
was made known to all the people in one day, by the magic 
of this agency. 

Before Fulton had enthralled the volcano, Franklin had 
obtained the lightning; Morse has harnessed it to the car of 
humanity. If there is indeed a common element to the 
workings of thought and the discourse of matter, it is that 
most marvellous, pervading fluid, by which man is now in- 



144 THE NEW ROME. 

fusing dumb nature with his own intelligence. The globe 
is transformed, by the magnetic telegraph, into one human 
head ; the interlacing nerves universalize every sensation 
and every thought. Man cannot be omnipresent ; but, like 
gods of Olympus, he can make infinitely small the loss of 
time. Who dares to call a unitary commonwealth a 
chimera, when the eye of science can no longer measure the 
obstructions that impede its formation? When the lover can 
waft his kisses from the crags of the Cordilleras to the 
cottage eaves on the shores of Lake Leman, who will talk of 
a Hellespont that cannot be traversed 1 In a few months 
every principal part of the earth's surface will be so connected 
as to form, for all purposes of intelligence, a single town ; our 
gazettes w ill give us hourly bulletins of what has taken place 
in the moments last p>a$t> Let us see how far this under- 
taking has already proceeded. 

All the towns of the Atlantic seaboard and of the Missis- 
sippi valley are connected by thirty thousand miles of tele- 
graphic wire; despatches are transmitted in a few minutes 
from Boston to New Orleans, a distance of three thousand 
miles, equal to that separating Europe from America, 'without 
intermediate stations. The British American system is con- 
nected (as at Halifax) with the American. All the towns of 
California are to be put in communication, and in a year or 
two the connection will be established, by way of the Rocky 
Mountains, with the Mississippi valley and the Eastern coast. 
The California news, which now consumes four weeks in its 
passage, will then arrive in as many minutes ! In Mexico, a 



SOCIAL ORGANIZATION. 145 

wire is in operation from the capital to Vera Cruz. On the 
Isthmus, Navy Bay and Panama will shortly be connected. 
Brazil already entertains a project for netting its vast terri- 
tory with these nerves of steel. All these systems will of 
course be connected with each other, and thus reduce the 
American continent to perfect universality of place and time. 
The Old World is not for from the same goal. In 
England, France, and Germany, the organization is already 
perfect. Submarine lines connect the former country with 
Ireland, France, Belgium, and Holland. From Marseilles, in 
France, a wire is to be laid to Corsica, thence by way of Sar- 
dinia to Tunis. From Tunis a branch line is to go to Algiers, 
and another to Alexandria. India is being drawn into these 
magnetic meshes. A report on this subject contains the fol- 
lowing : — 

" A magnificent system of magnetic telegraph is to be immediately 
introduced into Hindostan. For some time past, Dr. O'Shaughnessy, of the 
medical staff, has been engaged in trying various experiments with short 
lines, with a view to ascertain the best form of wires and poles for 
traversing the vast spaces of that couutry. These trials have given com- 
plete satisfaction to the Board of Directors, and orders have been issued 
to commence the works forthwith. The lines will commence at Calcutta, 
and make the tour of the peninsula. From the " City of Palaces" they 
will traverse the province of Bengal, following more or less regularly 
the course of the Ganges to and through the holy suburbs of Benares, 
and up to the conjunction of that river with the Jumna at Allahabad ; 
thence they will pursue a pretty direct route to Agra, the ancient cap- 
ital of the Mogul empire while Delhi was but a provincial town. From 
Agra they will branch off in a north-westerly direction through Delhi to 
Lahore, to form the final fetter for the subject kingdom of Runjeet 
Singh. With this immense line of telegraph other lines are to be in 
connection, traversing the entire length and depth of the peninsula, aa 
7 



146 T HE NEV/ ROME. 

these will run from the banks of the Hoogley to the Coromandel coast ; 
and thence will stretch across the Caraatic, traverse Hyderabad, and 
issue on the shores of the Arabian Sea. The three Presidencies of 
Bombay, Madras, and Bengal will be thus brought into direct and instan- 
taneous communication with each other and with the remote provinces 
lying under the Himalaya Mountains, or about the sources of the Indus." 

The integration of this system with that which takes its 
start at Alexandria, will of course speedily ensue. Then will 
be verified the prediction of the English cabinet minister 
when interrogated on a matter relating to Indian affairs, on 
which he had no precise information, that a telegraph would 
soon be finished to Calcutta, which would enable him to trans- 
mit all puzzling questions asked of him in a session, and 
report the answer in the same session a while afterwards. 
Switzerland, Italy, and Austria, all have their systems. 
Russia is weaving a net over her immense dominions, from 
Poland to the eastern coast of Siberia. An expedition of 
savans is just setting out from St. Petersburg to make a 
scientific exploration of the eastern peninsula of Kamschatka, 
and select the telegraph stations there. 

But we cannot stop here. The connection must not unite 
humanity into two halves, but into a single whole. The 
wires are already forging which shall rivet America to Europe 
and to Asia. The English house of Harrison has received 
from that, and from the Danish government, a monopoly of 
a submarine telegraph running from Scotland to the Shetland 
Isles, thence by way of the Faroe Islands, Iceland, and Green- 
land to Labrador, which is to form the point of union with 
our continental system. This, be it observed in passing, is 



SOCIAL ORGANIZATION. 147 

the route taken by the first discoverers of America, the 
Northmen, when they skipped from island to peninsula, until 
they set foot on " Vinland." The Russian government will 
carry the line from Kamschatka, by way of the Aleutian 
Isles, to Alaska and her American possessions, whence it will 
be continued to California, closing the magic tircle of the 
earth. From India the wires will enter China, and connect 
with the Siberian lines ; they will cross the sea to the new- 
found Australian Eldorado, stringing the islands like pearls 
upon the necklace of the sea. From the north coast of 
Africa they will engirdle that continent, meeting at the Cape. 
From these outer circles the tendrils will quickly insinuate 
themselves into the interior of the continents. The batteries 
constantly charging, are constantly necessitating a discharge, 
and the societary electricity will have built its own cause- 
ways in a few short years, from pole to pole, and along the 
whole stretch of the equator. The fire that glides upon them 
will scorch away the differences of race and nation, and the 
fetters of custom and tradition, and their light will illumine 
man with a wisdom he has never known. Let the prediction 
be recorded, that the results produced by the magnetic tele- 
graph will infinitely transcend the conceptions which can now 
be formed by the most sanguine prophet. It will facilitate 
commerce to such an extent as in a measure to dissolve it, — 
for the pursuit of commerce as a separate employment can 
only be profitable while there are difficulties in the way of 
its incidental prosecution. It will equalize and regulate ex- 
changes, and raise credit to the level of capital ; it will place 



148 THE NEW ROME. 

the unculled treasures of the earth at the command of the 
penniless, and thus bring on the solution of the great social 
problem, to make every man rich. By the attraction of 
interest it will rivet the political forces of the earth to their 
natural centre, and produce a unity of political forms and 
political liberty. It will displace representative government 
by a direct democracy ; enabling the assembled world to dis- 
course on their common affairs with the same freedom with 
which the populace of Athens and Rome ruled the world 
from their market-places. 

It will break the force of the crisis of 1854. But power- 
ful as it is, even this is not the only corrective. The earth 
has herself opened her bosom, and poured out its fulness. In 
1S47, the reports of Colonel Mason, the military governor 
of California, began to teem with marvellous accounts of 
" fields of gold," said to have been discovered there. No- 
body believed him, until the report leaked out that a whole 
garrison, commander and all, had deserted in quest of the 
treasure. They were immediately followed by a strong 
deputation from the Atlantic cities, which has ever since gone 
on increasing. The following figures will give some idea of 
the effect of the discoveries in California and Australia upon 
commerce and society : — 

The amount of California gold coined in the mints of the 
United States, was. 

In 1848 $44,177 

1849 6,147,509 

1850 36,074,062 

1851 55,938,232 



SOCIAL ORGANIZATION. 149 

The amount coined in 1852 maybe safely estimated at 
$75,000,000. This, however, is by no means the entire yield 
of the mines, which may be set down in the aggregate, at 
$200,000,000. The Australian mines are found to exceed 
those of California in productiveness ; the golden age is an 
undeniable reality. — It is worthy of remark, that in conse- 
quence of this liberality, gold, the king of metals, will be 
compelled to doff his royal robes, and mingle with his baser 
brethren on terms more approaching to equality. The produc- 
tion of gold bore the following proportions to that of silver : — ■ 

Silver. Gold. 

In 1800 1 45 

1847 1 18 

1851 1 6 

1852 1 3 

In other words, the proportionate yield of gold is at present 
fifteen times greater than it was fifty years ago. As the value 
of these metals is inseparable from their rarety, this must be 
attended with an alteration in their relative value. The pro- 
duction of silver increases with great regularity, one and a 
half per cent, in every year, while the production of gold, ever 
since the discovery of the Siberian, Californian, and Australian 
mines, advances with more rapid but less even strides. It is 
evident that its present value, as compared to silver, is tradi- 
tional and factitious. If the legal valuation of gold, and its 
sufficiency as a tender be removed, as the dictates of justice 
to the owner of silver demand, we shall have a steady fall in 
the comparative value of gold corresponding to its increasing 
supply. How well this fact is understood by the holders of 



150 THE NEW ROME. 

the two metals, may be gathered from the fact that the Bank 
of England had in its coffers, 

In 1S4T. In 1852. 

Silver £1,000,000 £19,000 

Gold 7,000,000 21,000,000 

The effect of this supply is distributive and therefore 
equalizing ; not only because it opens new markets, drains 
surplus labor, and discovers new countries, but because 
money is in itself the representative of intercourse, the pivot 
of business, and because those who handle it are taught by its 
very glitter the mysteries of business. Capital is hoarded 
labor; credit anticipated labor ; money represents the imme- 
diate transition from labor to enjoyment. It makes credit 
unnecessary and capital useless ; its tendency is, however, to 
elevate credit and reduce capital, where, as at present, capital 
is ordinarily in the ascendant; making men rich, not in pro- 
portion to what they hold back, but to what they pay out. It 
is only when turned from its legitimate purpose, business, and 
diverted into its opposing channel, of speculation, that it 
assumes itself the form of capital, and conduces to a social 
stagnation, if the continued supply does not preserve the 
motion of the current.* 

The miners of the Pacific set the final seal upon the triumph 



* It will scarcely be necessary to refute the possible objection to this 
argument, that money, or currency, and capital, are identical. Capital 
means the power derived from withholding money; currency, the ability 
to dispense with capital. He who gathers water in a tank, fares best in 
seasons of drought ; while the rain lasts, he is on a level with others. 



SOCIAL ORGANIZATION. 151 

of free trade. When all surplus labor found its ample re- 
wards ; when prices were found to rise, by the emigration of 
the laborer, immeasurably faster than they ever had by the 
exclusion of the fabric; when the discord arising from the un- 
equal distribution of men, land, and money, which would 
never give way before the quackeries of exclusiveness and 
national competition, were found to resolve themselves by 
the freedom of intercourse ; when it was seen that the raw 
product and the manufactory were nearer to each other after 
the article had run the round of six thousand miles of unin- 
terrupted trade, than when the prohibition of trade had dun- 
geoned the seed in its native soil, and imprisoned the spirit 
of enterprise in its own furnace; when a community richer, 
happier, and better than the world had ever known, sprung 
from the brain of this new king of Olympus, without a gov- 
ernment, without a colony, without a corporation ; then it was 
found that society had in itself the corrective, developing 
principle, which governments could only hamper, and not 
promote ; then the sentiment of Jefferson, that that govern- 
ment is best which governs least, took the form of a societary 
canon, and the separation of state and commonwealth be- 
came the duty of a world which had just accomplished the 
other duty of the separation of church and state ; — and Gene- 
ral Pierce was elected with an overwhelming majority. His 
election is the emancipation of American business from the 
tutelage of the Federal Government. 

Previous to this (1851) the ocean world had held its first 
Olympic festival. Where, since men live and move, was 



152 THE NEW ROME. 

there ever such a fane, such an oblation, such an assemblage 
of worshippers ! Vast as the sea, pellucid as the heavens, 
teeming with riches as the soil ! Earnestly offered, reverent- 
ly celebrated, and replete with blessings. All mankind as- 
sembled, all in unison, all returning ennobled and enriched ! 
Transitory because ubiquitous, fleeting because eternal, short- 
lived, yet unforgotten, who shall tell when the wonders of the 
"World's Fair shall have end ! 

We have brought down the stream of social history to the 
present time. If, in pursuance of our leading thought, we 
strive to discern its bearings upon the future, we shall also 
adhere to our other principle, not to teach the world our 
theory, but to learn our theory from the world. A phe- 
nomenology of facts, to use the abstruse but adequate He- 
gelian term, will enable us to sketch with some certainty 
the limits which the future development of humanity must 
conserve, since it most probably will proceed upon the 
same fundamental laws which have hitherto determined its 
course. 

Business is the hero of modern history, free trade its latest 
achievement. The harvest of the fruits of free trade will 
occupy our nearest future. But already Americans are dis- 
covering that the free trade which consists in the non-inter- 
ference of our own government, is very little, so long as it 
still leaves our trade subject to the annoyances of foreign 
governments. The protectionists were right in saying that a 
free trade which cuts a people loose from their own govern- 
ment, which might have coincident interests with them, but 



SOCIAL ORGANIZATION. 153 

leaves them open to the spoliations of other governments, 
whose interests are likely to be antagonistic, is as much of a 
curse as of a blessing. Americans will want to enjoy the 
blessings of free trade by exchanging with the busy workmen 
of Japan the products of their industry. The Japanese gov- 
ernment will forbid them. Americans will desire to enjoy 
free trade by going to the rich fields of Cuba and of Hayti, 
and drain wealth from their teeming soil. The Emperor and 
the Captain-General will interfere. Americans will ask, " Is 
this free trade ? If our government has no right to restrict 
our trade, have these despots the right to restrict that of those 
with whom we desire to hold commerce 1 Have they a right 
to trammel us as well as them ? Suppose America had from 
the first insisted upon this alleged right of governments, where 
now would be America and Europe ? Will America draw 
any profit or advantage from the observance of this right in 
other powers, which she has renounced for herself? Will it 
not be to her a constant source of loss and vexation 1 Is it 
not her interest to dispute that right 1 Is not her interest, 
and that of the people of the so-called-" foreign" states, coin- 
cident? Are not rights, national as well as private, insti- 
tuted for the benefit of those who observe them, and should 
they not be discarded when they lead to their detriment 1 
Are not governments instituted for the benefit of the gov- 
erned, and should they not be abrogated for the same pur- 
pose 1 Are not all governmental rights fictions, and should 
fictions ever be allowed to do harm 1 Is it not madness or 

superstition to sacrifice the rights of real persons, of men 
7* 



154 THE NEW ROME. 

and women, to the claims of governments, of corporations, of 
nonentities ?" 

Thus will the existence of foreign governments come in 
conflict with American enterprise, and with the true interests 
of foreign peoples; and thus will universal annexation come 
upon the heels of unfettered commerce, resolving into a 
higher unity the antagonism of free trade and protection. 

The surface of the earth thus opened to business is, how- 
ever, too large for its present powers of subjugation. 

Electricity answers well for the transmittance of thoughts 
only ; the motive powder of steam has a reverse application. 
Railroads are radically imperfect and incapable of perfectibil- 
ity, on account of their costliness and immovability. Yes, we 
shall not long rest easy under the discrepancy which leaves 
us more remote from the inland districts of " our own" con- 
tinent — the road, throughout its whole length, alive with our 
active fellow-men — than from the shores of distant " foreign" 
lands, separated by three thousand miles of a barren sea. It 
seems unfair that that which feeds us should separate us. 
Nor will it be less irksome to be compelled to wait four 
weeks for the arrival of men or things from California, when 
we have been informed by the telegraph of their departure 
five minutes after it took place. The telegraph demands a 
method of locomotion which shall in some degree correspond 
to it. 

To solve this problem, men will revert to the ship, the 
ancient engine of wealth because of freedom, and of freedom 
because of intercourse. Our modern steamers have sails to 



SOCIAL ORGANIZATION. 155 

resist the air, and a motive power to impel them forward. 
What 7iiore has the condor, when he launches his ponderous 
frame into the thin atmosphere* that surges around the sum- 
mits of the Andes 1 A little alteration of adjustment, and 
these iron swans will leave their native element and ride in 
mid-air. We are on the eve of aerial navigation. The 
experiment of steaming and towing in the atmosphere by 
means of a screw-propeller, raised and supported by a 
balloon, has been tried successfully at Paris. The balloon, 
which is a toy, must be discarded, and then we shall have the 
practical navigation of the air. 

The civilization of mankind has always been regulated by 
their navigation ; the earliest was potamic, as attained on the 
banks of the Nile and the Euphrates, the Indus, the Ganges, 
and the streams of China. This expanded into the Mediter- 
ranean, which bore the bright fruits of Greek and Roman 
industry, art, and power. The Northmen broke the spell 
that seemed to bind humanit}^ to this charmed sea, and gave 
it a rival in the German Ocean and the Baltic. This was the 
piebald condition of the Middle Ages, terminated by the 
admiral who unchained the oceans, and initiated the system 
perfected by the settlement of California and the occupation 
of the Pacific. But, 

The first four acts already past, 
A fifth shall close the drama with the day ; 
Time's noblest offspring is the last. 

* The mercury of the barometer at fourteen inches. 



15G THE NEW ROME. 

The sea is less confined than the river, the ocean more ubiqui- 
tous than the sea, but the air alone is fitted for a universal 
civilization. Its shores are every where; it can penetrate the 
poles ; it will settle the wilds of Tartary and the valleys of 
Central Africa. It will know no harbors and no ports, no 
depots and no entrepots. It will make all parts of the earth 
alike passable and alike accessible. It will give us the vic- 
tory over Russian continentalism. Freedom is now limited 
to the oceanic world, to England and America ; Russia, with 
its continental dependencies, is despotic ; it has no ships, and 
therefore no freedom ; no freedom, and therefore no navy ; 
having no navy, it can never do great injury to the seafaring 
world. But its despotism gives it an army, and its army will 
protect its despotism. The seafaring nations, on the other 
hand, have their navy to protect their freedom, but they will 
never have a large standing army to extend their system. 
To suppose this, would be to deny every leading characteristic 
of Americanism. This would keep the two halves of the 
world in a state of perpetual isolation, did not the navigation 
of the air restore them to a common element. American 
air-privateers will be down upon the Russian garrisons — to 
use our own expressive slang — " like a parcel of bricks ;" and 
the Russian serfs will fasten to their skirts, and be elevated to 
a share in their liberties. 

To descend from the sublime to the ridiculous, we are led 
to consider a question of politics which presents itself in this 
connection. The annexation of the world, and the navigation 
of the air, or either of them alone, will make it impossible to 



SOCIAL ORGANIZATION. 157 

collect duties, even " for purposes of revenue." How, then, 
would the President's salary be paid 1 

The question of revenues and expenditures will reduce 
itself to little more than this. The United States will never 
have a considerable standing army. Still less will it ever 
be necessary to maintain a large navy in times of peace. 
" Foreign relations" will be vastly simplified when there shall 
be no " foreign" country except Kussia ; and the " outfits and 
hints" will be curtailed. The custom-house officers will no 
longer have an opportunity of serving their country. The 
average government expenses will not be likely, at any 
time, to exceed the amount of $60,000,000, which they 
reached in the fiscal year ending June 30th, 1851. 

This must not be levied in such a shape as to become a 
tax upon business, as is the case with duties, excises, and 
licenses, for business must be unfettered. Nor must it in- 
volve an encroachment upon the sovereignty of the indi- 
vidual, in the shape of an inquisitorial examination into his 
private affairs, in the shape of an income or inheritance tax, 
or a per centage on debts and credits. Yet it must be upon 
all alike, or rather upon every individual, not in proportion 
to his wealth, for that may be the result of his enterprise, and 
enterprise should not be discouraged, but in proportion to the 
bounty he receives from nature, our common parent. All 
men are entitled to the land, but all cannot use it ; let those 
then that do so pay for this privilege. The burden will not 
rest on them, for they are at the fountain head of wealth, and 
will levy the cost of what they pay upon the productions 



158 THE NEW ROME. 

which others must buy of them. For the same reason it is 
not necessary to graduate the tax according to the quality or 
location of the soil, but simply to. measure its extent. This 
will give certainty, and dispense with assessments. If -gradu- 
ally introduced it would have no social effect whatever. The 
whole quantity of improved land in the Union was ascertained 
by the census of '51 to be 112,042,000 acres. 

A tax of one cent to the acre would yield a revenue of 
$1,120,420 ; the sum would, however, be increased by levy- 
ing at least one cent upon every parcel smaller than an acre. 
Without allowing for this increase, doubling the ratio annu- 
ally, the sum would rise in six years to $70,580,400, — cer- 
tainly equal to $60,000,000, — with a very large margin for 
the expenses of collection. The tax would then be sixty-three 
cents to the acre ; so that the largest Northern former would 
be held to pay $120, the mere houseler twenty cents, and the 
Southern planter $030. As it is evident, however, that the 
improvement of land will extend very rapidly, even* leaving 
annexation entirely out of the question, while the government 
expenses will rather be diminished than swelled, it follows 
that the tax may be made to rise in far slower gradations, 
and yet attain the end. Supposing the number of improved 
acres to increase as fast as the population, it would require 
but forty-two cents to the acre to produce the revenue 
required ; so that a tax of four cents to the acre, increased 
by an additional four cents from year to year, would in ten 
years enable us to dispense with other means of raising re- 
venue. 



SOCIAL ORGANIZATION. 159 

This calculation is wrong, in so far as it makes no allow- 
ance for the taxes imposed upon the vast expanse of unim- 
proved land which is now withheld from improvement by the 
grasp of speculators ; and one great argument in favor of the 
measure is certainly to be drawn from its tendency to dis- 
courage this embargo upon cultivation. But a glance at our 
land tenures, and the modifications to which they will be ere 
long subjected, will show that property in the wilderness is 
an invention which will soon be known no more. 

Judge Reed, in the Pennsylvania Blackstone, is particular 
to remark that our tenures are purely allodial ; but his very 
earnestness of reiteration is a sign that he does not consider 
his position impregnable. The constitution of New York 
agrees with him, but in spite of these authorities, and a host 
of others, the fact can only be concealed from the wilfully 
blind, that our tenures are, in all essentials, feudal. They are 
derived by legitimate succession from the feudal lord para- 
mount, the king ; even where the revolution caused a violent 
transfer, it was but a transfer and not an extinction, a change 
of possession, not of quality ; the declarations of assumption 
by the states are express in saying that they succeed to all 
the rights of the proprietary, or the king. The essential 
characteristics of feudal tenures are, that they originate in a 
fictitious assumption of property by the governing power, 
that they pass by grant of that power in return for a render, 
and that the purchaser, or vassal, purchases the right of re- 
quiring a like render from his purchasers, or sub-vassals. 
The form of these renders has undergone many changes, but 



160 THE NEW ROME. 

they have never affected the character of the tenure. At 
first they consisted in a general duty to do service, military 
or agricultural ; then, in certain definite services, annually ren- 
dered ; subsequently, in the surrender of certain natural or 
agricultural productions, yearly. These were commuted into 
pecuniary rents, and, finally, these rents were bought off by 
the payment of a certain gross sum or purchase money paid 
once for all. This is one present form. But now, as at first, 
the government claims the right, without using the land itself, 
of keeping out of it any individual who has not paid it black 
mail for a dispensation from the privilege ; and now, as then, 
it conveys to such purchaser the liberty of playing this dog- 
in-the-manger policy over again, and exacting black mail 
from whoever denies to make the land available to himself 
and his fellows. 

To say that this policy perpetuates a desert, the usual 
argument of the land-reformers, is to assail its least vulner- 
able points. We have seen that property in land, as now 
understood, consists in the right to exclude humanity from a 
certain portion of earth and air, and to compel society to buy 
the liberty of entering upon it. But the purpose of such 
entrance is industry ; and hence our moral form of feudalism 
is nothing more nor less than a purchaseable embargo upon 
the labor of the community. The value of the real estate of 
the Union, by the census of 1850, was $3,270,733,093. Im- 
agine all this amount of capital divested from the embarrass- 
ment of industry to its furtherance ! Railroads, steamboats, 
telegraphs, the blood-vessels of society, which preserve its 



SOCIAL ORGANIZATION. 161 

health and avert its convulsions, are " poor stock," and there 
is no inducement for the capitalist to embark in them ; — all 
the energy of Philadelphia could hardly build the Pennsyl- 
vania Railroad. But real estate is " good six per cent, invest- 
ment of the best security ;" it pays admirably for the man 
who has made his fortune in spite of the difficulties interposed 
hy capitalists to use his fortune so as to interpose the same 
obstacles to the efforts of others. What proportion of those 
$3,270,733,093 would be required to build the Pacific Rail- 
road % Oh protection to home industry! Oh rivers and 
harbors ! 

Where the individual asserts his sovereignty against the 
government, where business is recognized as the great social 
regulator, a revolt against the feudal system is unavoidable. 
This has been carried on publicly since 1828. It will lead to 
the vindication of allodial tenures. These are marked by 
characteristics exactly opposite to those just sketched. This 
latter doctrine asserts that land possessed by no one belongs 
to no one ; that the actual occupation of land by an indi- 
vidual, or any bona fide association of individuals, guarantees 
an undisturbed continuance of that occupation, so long as it 
is not discontinued by the freewill of the parties; that a 
voluntary discontinuance of occupation leaves the land again 
without an owner, as before, open to the occupation of the 
first man who enters it with that intention ; that the exit of 
one occupant, to make room for another, is a business trans- 
action, legitimately attended with the payment of money ; 
but that a man cannot receive rent for land from another 



1 62 THE NEW ROME. 

because rent is a payment for the right to occupy, and the 
fact of receiving payment for the right of occupancy from 
another, is conclusive evidence that the payee is not in occu- 
pation himself; and he cannot be deprived of his land for 
debt, because as a man cannot live without having where to 
live, it is not to Jdq presumed that any consideration would 
induce him to make a contract involving the loss of this 
indispensable element of existence. Compare the following 
passage from the Report of the Commissioner of Public 
Lands, of 1852 : 

" While on the subject of the land offices in California, I would recom- 
mend that the township lines alone should be extended over the valuable 
deposits of the precious minerals, and that the lands containing those de- 
posits be left free to the enterprising industry of all citizens of the United 
States, and those who have declared their intention to become such, to 
work and mine at their pleasure, without let or hindrance, except so far 
as local. legislation may be necessaiy to preserve the peace of the country, 
and to secure persons in their possessory rights; and if any benefit is 
claimed by the government from the product of these lands, further than 
that which is general to all our citizens, by an abundant supply of the 
precious metals, that it be in the shape of a nominal charge for refining 
the ore and coining the metal, Which may be required to be done in the 
country, before permitting it to become a subject of traffic, barter, or 
exportation." 

This is the system of allodial tenures, which will triumph 
when the obliquities of the present land reform movement 
have been smoothed off by time and reflection. Occasioned, 
as that movement is at present, by a desire to escape from 
the evils concomitant to extensive, combined manufacturing 
industry, it meditates a relapse into the semi-culture of those 
sentimentally-idealistic times, when every man sits " under 



SOCIAL ORGANIZATION. 163 

his own vine and fig-tree," and mankind are divided into 
innumerable little familistic societies of three or four indi- 
viduals, separated by the width of a farm from the rest of 
the world, plodding and vegetating, without progress or de- 
velopment. Let us have nothing of land limitation ; large 
capital and large enterprise is as much needed in agriculture 
as in other pursuits and free business will as surely counter- 
act all its dangers. 

It is indeed a remarkable fact that the enormous strides 
of manufacturing enterprise of the last fifty years have been 
attended with no corresponding advance in the sphere of 
agriculture. The latter is still hampered by the want of 
combination, and consequent reckless waste of labor and 
scantiness of profit, with which it was pursued before the 
opening of the present era. At this moment butter and 
eggs are as high in price in some of the secluded agricultural 
regions and lumbering districts of Pennsylvania, as in the 
metropolis ; and the same articles are actually imported from 
the neighbouring province of Canada. This is partly to be 
accounted for by the inadaptability of steam machinery to 
these purposes. Steam is like its parent volcano, cumbrous, 
heavy, expensive, often dangerous, ami always destructive ; 
its appetite is unquenchable. Carbonic acid gas may prove a 
better motor. 

Another obstacle for the development of our industrial 
society is found in that relic of European barbarity, our patent 
laws. These insensate enactments, by preventing the com- 
merce of ideas, paying the individual for withholding, instead 



164 THE NEW ROME. 

of imparting his discoveries, and by cutting off the division of 
labor among inventors, and compelling each individual to 
retrace the same ground which hundreds have probably trav- 
elled before him, have done as much to retard contrivance, and, 
consequently, industry and wealth, than all the wars that were 
ever waged. Inventors themselves are coming out in opposi- 
tion. When they have been repealed, the march of intellect 
will accomplish the perfection of machinery, and the greatest 
possible dispensation of labor. 

This consummation will lead to the removal of the last 
remaining shackle interposed by government interference to 
obstruct the free development of the business community. 
The present crudities of the social system are generally 
ascribed to the conflict between capital and labor. Be that 
as it may, it were idle to hope that the strife will lead to a 
harmonious adjustment of the claims of these two elements. 
The days of old-fashioned labor are evidently gone by, never 
to return ; the wand of invention is erasing the curse which 
compels man in the sweat of his brow to eat his bread, and 
what of the task is yet undone will certainly not fail of its 
accomplishment. The doctrine of the divinity of labor will 
not hold ; — action is divine; — but labor unavoidably smacks 
of servitude; — the "damned spot" will not out. The direct 
or indirect title to the products of machinery of some sort 
will henceforth be the only avenue to wealth. To obtain this, 
mere naked labor will be daily more inadequate. But there 
is a far better balance to the power of capital, or accumulated 
labor; and that is found in the anticipation of labor, — in 



SOCIAL ORGANIZATION. 165 

credit. Credit, unfettered, is as much better than capital, as 
the future is greater than the past. 

The Democratic party have overthrown federal banks, 
and federal corporations, but in state politics their action has 
been confined to professions ; they talk of limiting banks and 
restricting corporations, but are themselves not sufficiently 
assured of the soundness of their own principle to reduce 
it to practice, without exception. And, in fact, it is not to 
be denied that, in the present state of things, banks and cor- 
porations of some kind, and to some extent, are not to be 
dispensed with. Business would be at a stand-still without 
them. 

The necessity of an evil proves the existence of a greater 
evil which the lesser is required to palliate. The need of an 
evil exception shows the iniquity of the rule. The purpose 
of the exceptions made to the general law in bestowing char- 
ters, is to provide a means of raising credit, which would be 
otherwise unattainable. Thus capital is endowed with extra- 
ordinary privileges, to enable it to overcome, in the given 
case, the obstacles to the attainment of credit presented by 
the ordinary course of affairs. But these ordinary privileges 
of capital consist in the power of monopolizing all credit to 
itself. A man with money can always borrow more, while a 
man without money can borrow none without spending even 
what he has. In thus overcoming the ordinary preponderance 
of capital by investing certain specified capital with a capacity 
to absorb a portion of credit greater than would otherwise 
fall to its rightful share, the practice of forming corporations 



106 T II B NEW ROME. 

undertakes to expel the devil by Beelzebub, the prince of 
devils. 

How is it that capital absorbs all credit 1 Why can a 
man with money always borrow more, while a man without 
money can borrow T none without spending even what he has 1 
Because the law lends a helping hand to the collection of the 
debt owed by the moneyed borrower, which it cannot lend 
for that incurred by the needless one. Because it guarantees 
the debts of the capitalist to the extent of his capital, leav- 
ing those of the non-capitalist unguaranteed ; because it not 
only prevents the absorption of capital by credit, but assists 
the consumption of credit by capital. 

The laws for the collection of debt are by no means 
necessary to the existence of society, for they are not even 
co-existent with it. The earlier part of the Middle Ages 
knew nothing of them. They can hardly be fitted into the 
ancient system of English law. The action of debt is com- 
paratively recent, and originally inappUcable to what are now 
called business transactions. The action of assumpsit is 
founded on a fictitious trespass. These writs have come into 
use with and- by the rise of capital, and their universal appli- 
cation marks its greatest ascendancy. The legal impregna- 
tion of debtors is a Roman element of our polity, against 
which the individualistic genius of the Germans has ever 
rebelled. 

The old Germanic code proceeded upon the rational prin- 
ciple, that whoever trusts a man's honesty and good fortune, 
should look to that honesty and good fortune combined, for 



SOCIAL ORGANIZATION. 167 

his return. This was giving a bounty to honesty and activity, 
and thus the adage, " A man's word is as good as his bond," 
was more than a sentiment. They had good reason for tear- 
ing out the tongues of the lawyers that were found in Varus' 
camp." When the issue of the French revolution had re- 
stored the independence, if not established the supremacy, of 
the Germanic race, these knots began to be disentangled. 
The constitution of Pennsylvania, of 1790, provides that 
" the person of a debtor, where there is not strong presump- 
tion of fraud, shall not be continued in prison after deliver- 
ing up his estate for the benefit of creditors ;" and the same 
enactment, in substance, was passed about that time, in most 
of the other states. In 1842, the legislature of that state, 
following the example of New York, went so much further 
as to decree that " no person shall be arrested or imprisoned 
for the recovery of any money due upon contract, or for 
damages incurred by the breach of any contract." This had 
been preceded by the exemption from sale or execution of 
sundry indispensable articles of furniture and necessaries of 
life ; and in 1849, the efforts of Colonel Small were success- 
ful in carrying an exemption of real or personal estate to the 
value of three hundred dollars. 

These laws follow the current of history, and are not 
likely, for that reason, to be drifted back to its source. At 
the same time, the very objections which have been urged 
against them contain in themselves the guide to further im- 
provements. The exemption, while preventing the relapse 
into utter penury of those who enjoy its benefits, hinders 



1 G8 THE NEW ROME. 

their advancement by curtailing their credit, or rather by 
leaving them at a disadvantage as compared with those who 
have imexempted property as a purchase for the lever of 
their enterprise. To remove this discrepancy, a public meet- 
ing, held at Cincinnati, in 1847, proposed the abolition of all 
laws for the collection of debt. The project, with very little 
agitation, has been slowly but surely gaining ground with the 
masses ; it will be carried, piecemeal, perhaps, and slowly, 
but certainly and entirely. 

With this consummation of the divorce of state and 
commonwealth, political agitation will come to an end. The 
supremacy of the state, the organization of force, will be suc- 
ceeded by the organization of interest ; " commonwealth" is 
the legitimate designation of that idea, the common term 
society being more comprehensive, and, for that very reason, 
too vague, for the present purpose. But this supreme 
society, the commonwealth, is not to be regarded as a mere 
reproduction of the state with new components, making new 
laws, and compelling their observance. The great distinction 
between state and commonwealth, is that the latter proceeds, 
not upon statutes, but upon agreements ; not upon the outer 
law of dictation, but upon the inner, of self-interest ; not by 
compulsion, but by liberty. It is a great mistake to suppose 
that society is destined ultimately to take the form of a single 
great joint-stock concern, managed by a great president and 
board of directors. Even supposing this form adopted, it 
would not be preserved, because a corporation having no an- 
tagonistic interests of other corporations or of individuals out- 



SOCIAL ORGANIZATION. 169 

side of its pale, would fall asunder from want of external 
pressure. The commonwealth will be a self-managing, self- 
adjusting organization, in which the last shall be first and the 
first last, which will have no visible head and no personal 
management. 

" The organizing principle of the commonwealth," the 
Socialists will say, "is association." But this is to be under- 
stood with many qualifications. Association is one of the 
highest functions of human nature, and the individual must 
have attained a very high stage of moral and intellectual cul- 
ture, of tact, skill, and experience, of means and of liberty, 
to be qualified for this elevated sphere of exertion. Associa- 
tion was begun by kings, nobles, and wealthy merchants, in 
the formation of the East and West India Companies; it was 
continued by merchants and bankers, in our banking and in- 
surance institutions ; by merchants, engineers, and landed 
proprietors, in the construction of railroads and canals ; by 
manufacturers, in the erection of cotton mills and furnaces ; 
by the sprigs of our moneyed aristocracy, in the mining 
companies of California. It has always succeeded when 
undertaken by men in good circumstances, in pursuit of afflu- 
ence ; never yet, when resorted to by the suffering, in pursuit 
of comfort. It has made gods of men, but it has not yet 
been found capable of making men out of drudges. Let 
not association be considered a royal road from the bottom 
of society to the summit; it is one of those narrow bridle- 
paths, over which he who has the fortune to ride may 
trust his mule to carry him in safety, but on which the foot- 
8 



170 THE NEW HOME. 

man is in constant danger of losing his hold and tumbling 
over the precipice. 

That Socialism which confines its teachings to association 
is contracted, because it embraces but one form of the rela- 
tions of individual interest. What is it that makes associa- 
tion advantageous'? The more intimate connection of the 
parties. Association is a form of intercourse ; and intercourse 
for the furtherance of interest, business, is the electric fluid 
which restores the fitness of human relations. In all its phases 
it tends ultimately to this result, however it may seem, at 
first, to contravene it. — Josiah Warren has stated the social 
problem with the same clearness as the political. " Value is 
the 'measure of price; but cost ought to be the measure of 
price. The difference between cost and value, then, is the 
evil ; to identify them, the remedy. Now, what is it that 
deals with the difference between value and cost? Business. 
The business man makes his fortune out of the difference be- 
tween what his goods cost him and what they are worth to 
others ; between the sacrifice he made to obtain them, and 
the loss others would suffer through not having them. But in 
thus occupying the gap, he fills it. In so far as his earnings 
go to the comfort and enjoyment of him and his, they are the 
legitimate results of a legitimate system. It is only in so 
far as they go beyond this, and furnish him with capital, thus, 
while capital confers the privilege of hampering credit, mak- 
ing him a drag-wheel upon the business community, that they 
overshoot the mark. Strip capital of its privileges, enfranchise 
credit, and unfetter business, and the evil is prevented. Yet 



SOCIAL ORGANIZATION. 171 

even so, business has a constant self-corrective in it. Every 
new line of business begins with enormous profits, because 
cost and value are then far asunder ; as it conies into use, 
profits are reduced, or, in other words, cost and value approx- 
imated ; until it becomes ' over-stocked,' yielding no 'living 
profit, 5 which, when formalized, means that the value has 
become less than the cost. The business energies thus thrown 
out of employment are then free to post themselves into some 
new gap between cost and value, produced by the unequal 
advance of population, improvement, legislation, invention, or 
intellect, and to fill it up in like manner as they did the 
other." 

The " sovereignty of the individual," the great securing 
principle centered in politics, is thus compensated and com- 
pleted by the " equalization of cost and labor in business," 
the sum of Socialism. 

The point, then, is, to make every one a business man. 
The last political obstacle is removed when we abrogate the 
political preponderance of capital over credit. The intellec- 
tual obstacles are removed by the diffusion of information. 
Every one, now a days, is able to learn to read. Our steam- 
presses diffuse more intelligence in a day than was formerly 
communicated in a century. The moral obstacles will give way 
before constant intercourse and communication. Whoever 
would better mankind, let him bring them together. Our 
contrivances for enjoying life, when contrasted with our 
opportunities, are to this day most wretched. One half of us 
live in towns, so closely and so awkwardly packed, that we 



172 THE NEW ROME. 

are constantly in each other's way, and yet have so little in 
common as to derive hardly any compensating advantages 
from the contact. Parcelled off into innumerable petty 
households, we reproduce in each the same blunders, the 
same imperfections, the same littlenesses, the same restraints, 
the same waste of labor and materials, the same scantiness, 
the same squabbles, the same follies, and the same monotony. 
Nothing is learned, and nothing forgotten. From this bond- 
age we fly to the country to find purer air indeed, and more 
freedom of motion, but still less of cultivation and progress, 
because still less of intercourse. 

American contrivance has found the means of exterminat- 
ing this relic of European barbarity also from the structure of 
society. The following article, taken entire from the New 
York Tribune, of December 8, 1850, will show to what 
phenomenon we refer : — 

" The St. Nicholas Hotel. — One of the most beautiful buildings in 
the whole extent of Broadway is that new edifice of six stories, whose 
white marble front on the west side of the street, just below Spring street, 
attracts the attention of every passenger. It is more richly and elaborately 
ornamented than Stewart's — which is of the same material, but in a less 
striking and ornate style — and has the great advantage of standing in the 
full light of the morning sun, which brings out all the brilliancy of the 
stone, and all the beauty of the sculptured decorations. On the other 
hand, it suffers from an excessive number of windows, which injures the 
effect, and it is not quite broad enough to give full scope to so elaborate a 
style of architecture; its front should be two or three times the hundred 
feet it now covers ; this defect will, however, be somewhat remedied by 
an extension of the edifice in precisely the same style, seventy-five feet 
further down Broadway, which will soon be done. It is a pity it could 
not cover the entire block down to Broome street. 



SOCIAL O JIG A In I Z ATI ON. 173 

" The building of which we speak is to bear the name of the St. Nicholas 
Hotel. As we have said, it now occupies a front of one hundred feet on 
Broadway, the ground floor on that street affording room for four stores, 
in addition to the entrance and reading-room of the hotel — and when the 
proposed extension is completed, its front will be one hundred and seventy- 
five feet. It also includes a back building on Mercer street, and a middle 
building of the same dimensions as the front, but only five stories high. 
Broad and handsome halls running through the first, second, third, and 
fourth stories connect these three divisions of the establishment. 

" The entrance on Broadway is through a wide and elegant hall, at the 
lower side of which stands the reading-room. In the rear of the hall aim 
the reading-room is the office, and turning a corner into rather a private 
place, the visitor discovers the bar. The front rooms of the second story 
are arranged as public parlors and reception-rooms. On the same floor is 
the dining-room, some eighty-five by forty-five feet, with its ceiling about 
twenty-five feet high. In the middle building is a ladies' ordinary — a 
room of very handsome proportions. The third and fourth stories of the 
front building are devoted to suites of rooms for families ; the fifth and 
sixth to rooms for single gentlemen. The middle building and the fourth 
story of the back building, above the dining-room, are similarly arranged. 
The lodging-rooms for servants are in the fifth story of the back building. 
The halls and public rooms are heated by steam-pipes, and in the upmost 
story of each building are vast tanks for hot and cold water, for the use 
of lodgers, and also for deluging the house in case of fire. The establish- 
ment will be lighted with gas made in a separate building belonging to it, 
in the vicinity, in which are also the stables of the house. 

" The suites of rooms for families differ in that some have a parlor with 
one, and others with two bedrooms, with bath and water-closet. The 
rooms for single persons do not possess these conveniences. The house is 
generally decorated and furnished (though but a part of the furniture 
and upholstery is yet put in) with a lavishment of expenditure unpar- 
alleled in auy hotel in this country or Europe. The furniture is of 
rosewood in the public rooms and the rooms for families ; in those for 
single persons it is of mahogany. The carpets, the hangings, the mir- 
rors, the chandeliers, the gilding, the decorations in plaster and in 
fresco, are the ne plus ultra of expense, of richness, of luxury. Palaces 
may have more spacious apartments, but nothing more showy and 
sumptuous in their furnishing. Whatever of splendid and gorgeous in 
this way money could procure seems to have been obtained for this 



174 THE N E W R OMJE. 

hotel, with a view to outdo every other in elegance and splendor. Nor is 
comfort neglected ; the beds are quite perfect ; they consist of a sommier 
elastique or spring mattrass, with a heavy hair mattrass upon it : better 
could not be. The house at present will afford accommodations for 
some three hundred and fifty lodgers, aud will employ about a hundred 
and thirty waiters, chambermaids, and other servants. But when the 
additions contemplated shall be finished, there will be room for a 
thousand lodgers. 

•• Attached to the dining-hall is an ante-room where the meats arc 
carved. This is provided with large tables heated by steam, in which 
the dishes are kept hot. The kitchen, storerooms, laundry, and servants' 
dining-room are in the basement. The kitchen is no doubt large enough 
to do the work, but would be better were it considerably larger. The 
ranges are compact and convenient, but still much inferior, as we think, to 
the French. A large part of the heat for the cooking is derived from 
steam, furnished by a steam-engine in the wash-room. The same power 
drives the washing machines, two in number, — one holding about as much 
as two hogsheads, and the other about two barrels, — and the drying 
machine. By this apparatus we are told that shirts can be washed and 
dried ready for the ironers in ten minutes. The most laborious work of 
the laundry will thus be performed by machinery, as it ought to be. 

" We do not undertake to describe in more detail the arrangements 
and the sumptuousness of this hotel. That it will be a favorite with the 
public, is insured by its position and its splendor. In the last respect it is 
evident that a new era has begun for these great metropolitan caravan- 
series. Henceforth they must be furnished without regard to cost ; the 
days have gone by when quiet comfort, mere neatness, and a good table 
were sufficient. Persons from the country, and from other cities, who 
henceforth visit New York, especially if they bring their families with 
them, will now desire to experience the full extent of palatial magnificence 
in their lodgings and entertainment, and to have something to tell about 
on their return to the untravelled at home. 

" Hotel-building and furnishing has, however, not yet reached perfec 
tion, as we proceed tc indicate by a little criticism on the St. Nicholas. 

" In the first place a word which applies to all our buildings : they are 
too slightly made. We remember often noticing the walls of the St. 
Nicholas, as they were going up, with the reflection that they might be 
strong enough to stand, and doubtless were, for no architect would be fool 
enough to make a building otherwise, but that if they were ours, we 



SOCIAL ORGANIZATION. 175 

should add a brick or two to their thickness. Walls six stories high, 
which have to bear so great a weight of furniture, fixtures, and persons as 
these will contain, ought to be strong enough to stand, not only in ordinary 
circumstances, but even if a fire should consume their interior supports. 
Next, in respect to ventilation, we find the St. Nicholas deficient. Its 
apartments and single lodging-rooms, have no means of ventilation except 
by opening the door or windows. This is none the less a great fault be- 
cause it is so universal. Every good house should be so arranged as that 
the body of air in its apartments should be changed regularly, though im- 
perceptibly. Next, there are not baths enough. The single rooms are 
almost entirely without them, and a man lodged in the fifth story has to 
go out of the way down stairs to take a bath. In a hotel of such character 
and pretensions, though it is not necessary that baths should be attached 
to every single chamber, they should still be easy of access to all the 
occupants of such rooms. And then in respect to furniture, hangings, &c, 
though we do not wish to speak decisively about the St. Nicholas, inas- 
much as it is not yet completed, and we cannot judge of the final effect, 
still the tendency is to seek for splendor in the style of the showy North 
River steamboats, rather than for real elegance, and solid, luxurious, good 
taste, such as a gentleman of high culture, refinement, and love of art 
would exhibit in fitting up a palace for his own use. And yet this and 
not the North River method is the true one. There is also another defi- 
ciency which we had hoped here to see remedied. In a house six stories 
high, five weary flights of stairs have to be climbed in order to gain the 
upper story. This is an awful toil for the human legs, and unnecessary. 
There is steam power at hand, and there are ingenious brains enough to 
invent an elegant and convenient apparatus to convey skyward the upward 
bouud, and earthward the descending, without such excessive labor of 
mortal muscle. 

" We add that the St. Nicholas is owned by Mr. D. H. Haight, and 
will be kept by Messrs. Treadwell & Acker. As a further index of its 
luxury, we may say that merely to furnish it costs some $125,000." 

In closing this chapter with the statements of a contem- 
porary periodical, we offer the best proof that our farthest 
reaches into the future have not carried us away from our 
moorings in the serene haven of the present. 



III. — LANGUAGE 



rpHE tower of Babel frowns heavily upon the course traced 
out for the history of the future in these pages. Let us see 
how the last misgiving as to the power of humanity to satisfy 
its own requirements, is to be removed. How will the 
World's Republic escape a confusion of tongues % 

Rome has left a legacy of her power, in her language, to 
all the nations that once owned her sway. The New Rome 
will universalize the tongue which " proclaimed liberty to the 
nations, and to the people thereof." The English language 
is manifestly destined for all mankind. At this day it is 
spoken in England by twenty-seven millions of people ; the 
Celtic idioms of Wales, the Scotch Highlanders, and Ireland, 
are dead or dying. The English colonies unite in adopting 
the parent tongue, not even excepting Canada, which, in its 
origin, was exclusively French. In India, one hundred and 
twenty millions of souls are learning it. A new England is 
growing up in Australia. In the United States, however, the 
8* 



178 THE NEW ROME. 

process is most interesting ; here the English is the received 
organ of intercourse among twenty-five millions of people, of 
the most heterogeneous extraction. Spanish, French, Dutch, 
and German, are compelled to give way before it. Its onward 
progress is, of course, as rapid as that of the American people. 
It leads the way in the Sandwich Islands, and the Chinese are 
learning it in California, to carry it to the Celestial Empire. 
No language on earth receives so much attention from foreign- 
ers as the English : some millions of emigrants in the United 
States are bent upon acquiring it. In Germany, the study 
of English, until within the last five years, was limited, and 
bore no proportion to that of the French. At present it re- 
ceives close attention from all the friends of freedom, and from 
all who desire to emigrate, the French having been cast into 
the shade. The number of those who converse in this idiom 
is now estimated at seventy millions, while, a hundred years 
ago, it was just seven millions, a progress surely without a 
parallel. None of the languages of civilized Europe is used 
by so many individuals as this. The English literature already 
exerts an overpowering influence over all the other litera- 
tures of the world. Nothing is more certain than that the 
English language will extend over all the earth, and will very 
shortly become the common medium of thought — the language 
of the world. The most profound linguist of the time, Jacob 
Grimm, speaks in the following terms of the English lan- 
guage :* 

* In an essay, " Ueber den Ursprung der Sprache." Berlin, 1852. 



LANGUAGE. 179 

" Of all the modem idioms, none has derived from the very surrender 
and demolition of the old laws of tone, from the almost entire disuse of 
inflection, a greater force and power than the English ; and the unconfined 
fullness of its medium tones gives it an essential command of expression, 
such as never yet fell to the lot of a human tongue. Its entire highly 
intellectual and happy design and finish, are the product of a marvellous 
alliance of the two finest languages of later Europe, the Romanic and the 
Germanic, which, as is well known, have divided the field in such a man- 
ner that the sensuous foundation is taken from the latter, while the former 
has furnished the superstructure of intellectual abstractions. In point of 
wealth, balance, and sinewy knitness, no living language will bear com- 
parison with it. Yes, the English, not accidentally the mother and the 
nurse of the greatest poetical genius of modern times, in contradistinction 
to ancient classic art, — I of course refer to none other than Shakspeare, — 
is fully entitled to the dignity of a World's language, and seems destined, 
like the people who call it theirs, to govern, even in a greater degree than 
at present, at every corner of the earth." 



THE END. 



Biiain & Bbothekb, Printers and Stereotypers, 20 North William street, N. Y. 



ERRATA 



Page 70, line 7, from top, for " unsuccessfully," read " successfully." 
" lines 16 and 17, for " general," read " govt aed." 

72, line 3, for "sound," read "second." 

73, next to last line of text, for " orbis," read " orbit." 

75, last line of first paragraph, for " part of," read "past." 

90, line 6, for " inactivities," read " inanities." 

" " 16, for " part," read " past." 

99, 4th line from bottom, for " confidence," read " coincidence.' 
101, line 11, for " arrayed," read " arranged." 
113, " 1.2, for " Excited," read " Exiled." 
125, next to last line, for " 2,500,000," read "25,000,000." 

129, line 21, for " denied," read " desired." 

130, " 13, for " on," read "as." 

135, " 6, for " uncurrent," read " concurrent." 

" " 16, for " forms," read " forces." 
138, " 7, from bottom, for " Disencumbered," read " Encumbered. 
143, 4th line from bottom, for " obtained," read " chained.'' 
149, in the table transpose the words " Gold" and " Silver." 
160, line 8, for " one," read " our." 

" " 14, for "denies," read "desires." 
166, " 8, for "needless," read "needy." 

" " 22, for " impregnation," read " impugnation," 



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